New Delhi, December 29: Taking note of the public outcry against former Haryana police chief SPS Rathore, convicted in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case, the centre has decided to act tough on deviant Indian Police Service (IPS) officers and look into laxities in the registering of FIRs in women-related cases.
Henceforth, convicted police officers would automatically lose their medals. The Union home ministry has convened a meeting of its medals committee on January 4 to discuss the issue, which came to the fore following growing public demand for divesting Rathore of the police medal granted to him in 1985 (however, in subsequent years, he was declined a president’s medal, following adverse intelligence reports).
The committee has a two-point agenda: withdrawing Rathore’s medal and formulating a general view on how to deal with such cases in the future. Confirming the meeting, a senior ministry official said guidelines would be formulated on the basis of the committee’s recommendations and would be immediately applicable to all cases where IPS officers have been convicted. The guidelines would be conveyed to Rashtrapati Bhavan and the state governments.
On FIRs, the ministry will soon issue formal instructions to the states, directing the police to immediately register cases in all women-related cases. The ministry will do this, overruling the police view that the majority of such cases are either fake or untrue.
The ministry has decided to ignore the police’s view in the light of growing public criticism following reports that Ruchika’s friends and family members faced great difficulty in getting the case of her suicide registered.
Union home secretary GK Pillai is of the opinion that it does not matter if some of the cases turn out to be false; clear instructions will be given to the states to strictly follow the ministry’s norms in cases involving crimes against women. The police must first investigate all such cases and only then reject those that it found to have been fabricated.
–Agencies–