Parliament Street Police Station, which is located only a kilometre from the nation’s seat of democracy, Parliament House, seems to have turned into a bastion of moral turpitude where the supposed-to-be protectors of the people abuse and heckle them, least bothered even if it is a woman.
Even as the matter of respect for women has seen angry protests across the country following the gang rape of a student and her death in Delhi, a fresh complaint by a young woman protester has turned the spotlight on the police station house officer (SHO) Dinesh Kumar.
The woman, who is a school teacher, has alleged that she was detained by the police while on her way to India Gate on Sunday morning to join the protests, she was abused and even beaten up.
“I was detained at Ashoka Road and brought to the Parliament Street Police Station. When the SHO came, he started hurling abuses at me and slapped me and another person who was with me. They snatched my spectacles,” said the woman, who gave her name as Sakshi.
She said that the SHO also threatened a woman constable, “asking her whether she was going to treat me as a guest there.” She says that she was then made to mop the floor by the SHO. They were released on Sunday evening at about 6.30pm. After their release they joined the protests at Jantar Mantar.
Sakshi has been camping outside the police station to get her complaint registered. But senior police officials have refused to lodge an FIR, while suggesting that a departmental inquiry would be conducted into the incident.
This is the very same police station, headed by Dinesh Kumar, where a 19-year-old college student, who was also among protesters at Jantar Mantar, was detained on Christmas Day and allegedly beaten up. Responding to her tweets about her detention, protesters and lawyers rushed to her assistance, for which she was targeted again at the police station and made to apologise.
