Cop gets 1-year jail for molesting colleague

The woman claimed to have approached the deputy commissioner of police and the commissioner of police, but no action was taken against the accused and the FIR was registered at Malabar Hill police station only after she approached the Internal Complaints Committee

Mumbai: A metropolitan magistrate court on Saturday sentenced a 50-year-old police officer to one-year imprisonment for molesting and stalking a woman colleague. The complaint of the woman was registered only after she had approached the Internal Complaints Committee.

The metropolitan magistrate, Nadeem Patel, observed, “It is the duty of the police to protect the society. However, the accused has committed the offence of insulting the modesty of the woman and stalking his colleague. The age of the accused shows that he is a grown-up man. He is a police officer despite knowing the consequences of his act committed the offence and therefore, in such types of offences, if unwarranted leniency is shown then it will send a wrong signal to the society and also adversely affect the society.” (Getty Images)

The metropolitan magistrate, Nadeem Patel, observed, “It is the duty of the police to protect the society. However, the accused has committed the offence of insulting the modesty of the woman and stalking his colleague. The age of the accused shows that he is a grown-up man. He is a police officer despite knowing the consequences of his act committed the offence and therefore, in such types of offences, if unwarranted leniency is shown then it will send a wrong signal to the society and also adversely affect the society.”

“The informant is a married lady. She will not put her family at stake only to falsely implicate the accused. After filing several applications, the FIR was not registered. Therefore, she was fed up with the harassment and she went to the extent of consuming sleeping pills, which landed her in the hospital,” the court added.

As per the complaint, lodged by the woman police officer, she worked at a police station in south Mumbai since 2013 and the accused was posted in the same police station. She said, in 2016, the accused had helped her get treatment at a private hospital after she had developed an allergy and thereafter the two shared good relations.

In November 2017, she added, the accused called her at Kemps Corner and when she went there, he held her hand and expressed his “love” for her. As she did not want to create a scene, the woman quietly left the place.

She alleged that even thereafter the accused kept calling her and harassing her and when she tried to lodge a complaint against him, she was dissuaded by her seniors. On her persistent requests, on December 22, 2017, her statement was recorded at the police station, but no further action was taken.

The woman claimed that she then approached the deputy commissioner of police and the commissioner of police, but no action was taken against the accused and the FIR was registered at Malabar Hill police station only after she approached the Internal Complaints Committee.

The accused in his defence claimed that the woman lodged a complaint only after her husband came to know about their relationship. He also denied any of the incidents as alleged by her. He claimed that the victim created drama by consuming pills only to pressurise police to register a case.

The magistrate court, after hearing both sides, held the accused guilty of molesting and stalking the woman, observing that no one would take such a drastic step of taking excessive sleeping pills only to get an FIR registered.