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Ensure armed forces have ‘proper’ Internal Complaints Committee: Madras HC
The flight lieutenant was arrested by the Coimbatore Police on 26 September, following the rape survivor’s complaint on 20 September. Police said that the woman had approached them as she was not satisfied with the way the action was taken internally.
The Madras high court has directed the Union defence ministry to ensure the Indian Armed Forces have “proper existence” of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) and to impart “gender-sensitive awareness training” while disposing of a case related to the 2021 rape complaint by an Indian Air Force (IAF) woman officer against her colleague in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore.
The 28-year-old woman officer had filed a complaint with the local police in Coimbatore after she felt that the IAF authorities further victimised her while investigating the accused IAF flight lieutenant Amitesh Harmukh, 29.
The flight lieutenant was arrested by the Coimbatore Police on 26 September 2021, following the rape survivor’s complaint on 20 September 2021. According to the police, the woman had approached them as she was not satisfied with the way the action was taken internally.
The woman had also made a serious allegation that the IAF medical doctors subject her to a two-finger test to examine rape which has been banned by the Supreme Court in 2013. However, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari in October 2021, during a customary media interaction in Delhi, denied the allegation.
The Madras high court order comes while disposing of a petition filed by the state for Coimbatore’s ‘All Women Police Station’ against a lower court’s order handing over the custody of the accused to the IAF authorities before the police could complete the investigation. The woman officer submitted to the court that she was pressured to withdraw her complaint twice.
“In this era of awareness and sensitivity, it is difficult to comprehend that a victim of a sexual offence in the armed forces was not comfortable enough to take up her grievance and she was looked down on and pressured for having got the courage to report,” said justice RN Manjula of the Madras high court.
“If the women of the armed forces should not have the courage to fight such violence, then who else can have?” he said. The justice had reserved the orders in March and pronounced them on July 20.
The counsel for the Air Force Administrative College submitted that the accused was tried before the Court Martial and was convicted for the offence and hence this petition itself has become infructuous. However, pointing out that the petitioner was re-victimised in a heinous crime like rape, the court noted, “Even if the accused is convicted at the end of the trial that cannot be called as a complete justice and such victimisation can continue even after the conviction of the accused.”
The justice further issued eight guidelines to the criminal courts for dealing with the matters of handing over custody of the subjects of armed forces and also directed the Centre to ensure the proper existence of ICCs as per the ‘Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013’.
“When such visible misunderstanding between the two responsible forces is brought to this court, the court is obliged to assume a little higher responsibility by making a little more elaboration,” the justice said. “...Though the respondent has filed a detailed counter, the tenor of the counter is as though it is an onset for a power wrangle,” he added.
The accused and complaint are both flight lieutenants in the Indian Air Force and they were undergoing a seven-week course at the Air Force Administrative College in Coimbatore at the time of the alleged incident.
In September 2021, according to the complaint, after an evening party, the accused trespassed into the complainant’s room where she was unconscious and allegedly raped her.
A friend of the victim had caught him and recorded his confession the following morning. The rape survivor filed a complaint with the college authorities following which a fact-finding Court of Inquiry was formed, but medical specimens were not sent for forensic analysis for more than 10 days while the accused was roaming freely on campus and even allowed to sit along with the rape survivor in the classes.
Aggrieved, she lodged a complaint with the local police in Coimbatore, following which the accused was arrested on charges of rape. He was then produced before the judicial magistrate, additional Mahila Court, Coimbatore, on the same night.
The accused was in judicial custody till the end of September 2021. On a petition by the authorities, Coimbatore’s sessions court handed over his custody to the IAF in October 2021.
