The Supreme Court has deplored the tendency of police to protect the criminals for extraneous considerations and came down heavily upon a deputy superintendent of police (DSP)) for shielding three rapists who kidnapped and gang-raped a minor.
The DSP fabricated a document, purportedly a "panchayat nama" (decision), to claim that the victim had consensual sex with one of the accused and that there was no rape.
"The sequence of events in clear terms demonstrates the sinister and diabolical role played by the police and in particular by DSP Joginder Singh to sabotage the entire prosecution in order to protect the accused for obvious reasons.
"We are neither surprised nor shocked at the conduct of the DSP in as much as such instances are galore in this country where the police, instead of protecting the law, take the law into their own hands for extraneous considerations," a bench of justices B Sudershan Reddy and J M Panchal said in a judgement.
The apex court passed the judgement while dismissing the appeal of three rapists Jaswanth Singh and two others, who kidnapped the minor girl from her house and gang-raped her in Punjab's Talwani Rai village on June 26, 1989.
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