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TN police challenge IAF’s custody of flight lieutenant accused of rape on campus
Chennai: The Coimbatore city police have said that their department has filed a petition before the district court seeking custody of the flight lieutenant accused of raping his colleague and challenging a lower court’s order that handed him over to the Indian Air Force (IAF)
Chennai: The Coimbatore city police have said that their department has filed a petition before the district court seeking custody of the flight lieutenant accused of raping his colleague and challenging a lower court’s order that handed him over to the Indian Air Force (IAF).
After a 28-year-old woman officer filed a complaint to the IAF against the accused, she said was unhappy with the manner in which her case was handled, so she went to the Coimbatore city commissioner Deepak M Damor on September 20 to file an FIR against him. The All-Women’s Police Station in Coimbtaore’s Gandhipuram carried out preliminary enquiries, registered a case against the accused officer and arrested him on September 25. This was challenged by his counsel as well as representatives of the IAF who argued in the Additional Mahila Court that the local police have no jurisdiction in the case as the complainant and the accused belong to the armed forces and therefore subject to the Air Force Act, 1950. The lower court on September 30 ordered that the accused be handed over to the IAF custody allowing a court martial.
“The investigation on the woman’s complaint is still with us. The case was not handed over,” said a senior police officer of the Coimbatore city police. The investigation officer of the case from the All-Women Police Station on Thursday filed a revision petition in the Court of Principal District and Sessions Judge against the order of Judicial Magistrate of the Additional Mahila Court handing over the accused to IAF. “The revision application is to set aside the order of the magistrate and to keep the accused in judicial custody. And subsequently to direct the judicial magistrate to pass orders on the police custody application,” the officer quoted above said.
The contents of the appeal will be known only when it’s numbered by the court, said N Sundaravadivelu, counsel of the accused. “The police are incorrect to say that the case is not transferred and only the custody has been exchanged. When the court made the order under section 124 of the Air Force Act which is for the purpose of the investigation and enquiry, so the entire case stands transferred,” says Sundaravadivelu. He added that the process for the court of inquiry under the IAF is going on. He had previously argued that the court martial is the right authority to investigate the case.
According to the woman’s FIR, she was sleeping in her room after taking medicines for her ankle injury when the accused entered and committed the crime on September 10. She also made a serious allegation that the IAF medical doctors subjected her to a two-finger test to examine rape which has been banned by the Supreme Court in 2013. Reacting to the allegations, during a customary media interaction, the Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari on October 5 said that no illegal two-finger test was conducted on the woman IAF officer.
