Back to the bad old ways: Delhi police refused to file FIR in JNU rape case

In another incident of sexual assault at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, a 25-year-old PhD student has alleged that she was repeatedly raped by a research scholar on campus. According to reports, the accused is a resident of Patna, Bihar and had allegedly threatened her as well after the rape. According to a Times of India the “accused (whose name is being withheld as he has not been arrested yet) stays in Munirka area of south Delhi.” PTI reports that he is on the run and several teams have been assembled to nab him. The incident came to light on Tuesday when the woman made a call to the Police Control Room on Tuesday afternoon. The rape-survivor was then sent for a medical examination to AIIMS and based on her statement, the accused was booked under sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation). “The girl was friendly with the accused and he came close to her on pretext of marriage. He forced her to develop physical relations with him in her hostel room and his flat in Munirka on various occasions… He even filmed the act and threatened her of dire consequences if she reported the matter to police,” said a senior police official quoting the victim’s complaint. What is shocking in the case is that police only registered the complaint when the girl called the 100 helpline. According to the victim, when she tried filing an FIR with the police earlier, they refused to do so. The TOI report notes that in the first instance “no FIR was registered even though she was taken for a medical examination.” The police registered an FIR on late Tuesday. A  DNA report points out that the policed claimed that the girl “sought a compromise,” when she first approached them. The survivor has contradicted this claim and says that the police had called “the parents of the accused and reached a compromise the last time she had gone to lodge a written complaint.” [caption id=“attachment_1770217” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] Based on the girl’s statement, it would appear that the police first tried to reach a compromise instead of registering an FIR. this is clearly wrong since the new law on rape makes it mandatory for the police to register an FIR when they get a complaint of sexual assault. In this case, it should have ideally been filed when the PhD scholar first went to the police. The fact that the police only registered the FIR after she made a second call is not entirely surprising, since police in India have long had a lackadaisical and callous attitude towards rape victims. In 2013, when a 5-year-old girl was brutally raped and tortured in Delhi, the Delhi police refused to register an FIR. The girl had been missing for a few days and the police took no action to try and aid her recovery.  The police officials allegedly told the parents to just be grateful that she was found alive. One of the relatives of the rape survivor was quoted as saying in this IBN-Live report, “When we went to the police to ask them what they are doing about the case, they told us that we should be happy that the girl has been found and pray for her recovery. That’s where the matter ends.” Then in January 2013, in a  Noida rape and murder case , police once again refused to register an FIR until the 22-year-old missing woman was found gangraped and murdered in sector 63 of Noida. The family had alleged that the girl was being harassed by Udaivir Singh Yadav, a resident of Bahlolpur but the police took no action. When the girl went missing after going to work and the family tried to report the incident, the police told the parents that the girl must have eloped. It was only the next day that the parents got a call informing them that their daughter’s half-naked dead body was found lying alongside a road. And it’s not just the police in Delhi who have a shown a remarkable indifference to rape victims. In Kolkata Park Street rape case, rape survivor Suzette Jordan was mocked by the police when she went to file a complaint. She recounted to Firstpost's Sandip Roy , “They (police) laughed at me. They didn’t take me seriously,” and made leering comments about going to the disco and drinking beers on Valentine’s Day while she waited to file the complaint. This Hindustan Times report from the incident quotes her as saying, “When I had mustered enough courage to go to the police station to lodge the FIR, I was harassed. Even yesterday, when I went to speak to the officers with my aunt, they misbehaved with me. Two policemen also made lewd comments…While I was at the police station, the officers remarked that it was Valentine’s Day and asked me if I would go out for a drink with them. I was shocked!” Not only that the officers delayed the medical test as well in her case. In Punjab in 2012, a teen rape victim committed suicide after the police refused to take her gang-rape complaint seriously. After the victim filed the complaint, one particular constable named Gurcharan would ask the victim embarrassing questions relating to the alleged rape every time she used to visit the police station to find out about follow-up action on her complaint. Unable to deal with repeated humiliation, the victim committed suicide. It’s evident from the number of cases, where police refuse to register an FIR or just tell the victim’s family to walk away quietly, that nothing has changed despite the stringent new law. In the JNU scholar’s case, just because the girl said that the accused was a friend, the police obviously felt that a finding a “compromise” was better than filing an FIR.  In Jordan’s case, because she was drinking and out partying, according to the police, she was the one to blame. In the other cases in Delhi, the victims came from poor families and thus they had very little inclination to act. While the law has changed from 2013, police’s attitude in India towards rape victims is still the same.