Award-winning social worker in legal mess

A 70-year-old recipient of the National Woman Achiever Award appears to be at the centre of a legal maze after a Right to Information (RTI) plea revealed that she had a 14-year-old police complaint against her.

A 70-year-old recipient of the National Woman Achiever Award appears to be at the centre of a legal maze after a Right to Information (RTI) plea revealed that she had a 14-year-old police complaint against her.

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Nirmala Sharma, who was given the National Woman Achiever Award in 1995 for her contribution in social work, has been told that the police had arrested her along with four others following a non-bailable warrant in 1999.

Now, court officials and Delhi police are trading charges over the disappearance of the chargesheet and other case records of the case.

Nirmala appeared before a metropolitan magistrate's court last week and pleaded to the judge to end her harassment.

The case came to light after she filed an RTI application to the Regional Passport Office, Delhi on April 4, 2008, to know the reasons for not being issued a passport. She was informed that an FIR was pending against her.

Then, Nirmala filed an RTI application in the office of west district, Delhi police and was told that a case was registered against her and four others for conducting a protest against a DDA demolition drive in Paschim Vihar, west Delhi in 1998.

"My client has gone through a harrowing phase, simply for no reason. The police have no clue of the chargesheet," her counsel Sandeep Sharma told HT.

Metropolitan Magistrate Rajinder Kumar has asked the police officials concerned to produce the chargesheet and the case records related to the FIR. The police told the court that a chargesheet had already been filed and it was with the prosecution branch at the Tiz Hazari courts. But the prosecution branch said that no such documents were filed in the court.

"I have never received any challan for the concerned FIR. Police officials are known for registering false cases and it is their modus operandi to harass people," Nirmala told HT.