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Assam court junks police report against woman IAS officer accused of abusing junior
In its order dated September 13, the Gauhati HC directed Sarmah to approach the jurisdictional magistrate for redressal of her grievance.
A district court in Assam has rejected a police report that said there’s not enough evidence to act against a woman IAS officer who was accused by her junior of mental harassment and humiliation.
The court, however, directed a senior police officer to probe further.
The case pertains to allegations levelled by Arpana Sarmah, a circle officer, against Varnali Deka, the deputy commissioner of Nalbari district. The junior officer accused Deka of “mental harassment, public humiliation and threats” while on election duty during the Lok Sabha polls in May last year.
“I deem it fit and proper to issue a direction to further investigate, into the allegations made by the complainant in her FIR, through a senior police officer to be nominated by the superintendent of police, Nalbari,” Imdad Ahmed, chief judicial magistrate of Nalbari, said in his order on February 27.
HT has seen a copy of the order which was released on Tuesday.
Though Sarmah had filed an FIR against the IAS officer in May last year itself, the Nalbari police didn’t register it. The same was registered in November last year following directions by the court to the police. In its final report in the case submitted to the court, the police had stated that there was “insufficient evidence” against Deka.
But after going through the report, the Nalbari chief judicial magistrate’s court held that “it was not a fit case to accept the (final) report and take cognisance of the offence as the investigating officer had not collected prima facie materials related to the case”.
The court noted that there was no seizure report of that CCTV footage procured by the police and the investigating officer did not analyse its contents in the presence of independent witnesses.
In her complaint, Sarmah had alleged that while she was performing election duties on the night of May 7 at the Government Gurdon Higher Secondary School in Nalbari, Deka “continuously harassed her with and maligned her publicly with slang words in front of polling personnel”.
Following the alleged intimidation and harassment, Sarmah left at 1:50 am on May 8 “for the sake of safety of her life” and went to the Nalbari police station and lodged an FIR against Deka.
However, the officer in-charge of Nalbari police station allegedly didn’t register the FIR, following which Sarmah raised the issue with the Nalbari police superintendent, the DGP and finally filed a writ petition in Gauhati high court seeking action against Deka.
In its order dated September 13, the Gauhati HC directed Sarmah to approach the jurisdictional magistrate for redressal of her grievance. Subsequently, the complaint was filed at the additional CJM court in Nalbari.
