Helpless Supreme Court can’t do justice to Tamil Nadu woman gang-raped by cops

Expressing helplessness against the supremacy of procedure and the power of trial and high courts, the Supreme Court (SC) has granted relief to cops who gang-raped a woman and killed her husband in a Tamil Nadu police station 19 years ago.

SC, in fact, granted bail to the convicts on Tuesday and left the victim with no option but to wait and see if law takes the right course as the code of criminal procedure says police alone can set in motion the process of law.

Padmini was gang-raped by cops for days at the Annamalai Nagar police station in Chennai in the presence of husband Nandagopal in 1992. The witness husband, who was arrested for stealing Rs50, was illegally kept in custody from May 30 to June 2, 1992, and beaten to death with lathis by the at least half-a-dozen rapist policemen.

Police hauled up a junior cop, Mehboob Batcha, for abetting Nandagopal’s suicide, but refused to register a case of murder or gang rape.

A trial court examined entire evidence, including conclusive medical and post-mortem reports, but didn’t question the cops. It ignored Padmini’s testimony and did not force police to register a case of rape, let alone of gang-rape, despite being fully competent to do so.

The Madras high court merely convicted Batcha and some of his rapists and allegedly killer colleagues of abetment to suicide and sentenced them to three years.

SC, though powerless in granting justice to Padmini by enhancing the sentence, accepted her sordid saga and minced no words in criticising the cops and courts.

Judges Markandey Katju and Gyna Sudha Misra expressed “surprise” that the accused cops were not charged under section 302 IPC (murder). Instead, they said, the courts “below” treated the death of Nandagopal as suicide. “They [accused cops] should have been charged under that provision [302] and awarded death, as murder by policemen in police custody is in our opinion in the category of rarest of rare cases deserving death sentence,” the bench said.

“We are constrained to say that both the trial court and HC failed in their duty in this connection,” the judges said.

“The horrendous manner in which Padmini was treated by policemen is shocking and atrocious, and calls for no mercy,” it said, adding, “Policemen must learn how to behave as public servants in a democratic country, not as oppressors of people.”