Daughter’s sexual assault case by father: High Court directs appointment of new investigating officer

Bengaluru (IANS). The Karnataka High Court has pulled up the police for not properly investigating a case of sexual assault on a girl by her father and directed the Bengaluru Police Commissioner to appoint a new investigating officer.

A bench headed by Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order on Thursday while hearing a plea by the victim’s mother seeking direction for additional investigation into the matter. While considering the petition and looking into the lapses in the charge sheet submitted by the Koramangala police in Bengaluru, the bench directed the appointment of a new investigating officer.

The bench directed that the newly appointed Investigating Officer should conduct additional investigation and file a charge sheet in the court within 10 weeks, till then the trial court, which is looking into the matter, should not take any decision considering the charge sheet already filed by the police in the matter. Needed The court can proceed with the case only after the latest charge sheet is filed, the bench said.

The couple married in 2014 and later had a daughter. The wife lodged a complaint against her husband at Koramangala police station on August 24. She alleged that her husband used to strip off their four-year-old daughter’s clothes and touch her inappropriately while she was bathing.

She alleged that her husband forced her to have sex in front of the child. He uploaded obscene videos to the I-Pad being used by the girl and forced her to watch them.

The police had registered a POCSO case against the husband and filed a charge sheet in the local court in October, 2020. The mother objected to this and claimed that there were flaws in the charge sheet. However, his plea was rejected by the trial court. On this the mother filed an appeal petition in the High Court.

The court noted that the charge sheet submitted by the police shows that they have not collected the necessary documents for the investigation. The bench said, the investigating officers had willfully refused to collect the documents and the investigation was unfair.

The victim had named the accused in the statement and the same has not been included in the charge sheet. The statement of the victim was not even shown to the doctors. The police have not interrogated the victim’s mother nor recorded her statement. The bench noted that phones and laptops, which had pornographic videos, were taken into custody and there is no reference to them in the charge sheet.

The police have not even received the statement of the family members regarding the psychopathic behavior of the accused. The statement of the psychologists regarding the suffering of the child was also not included in the charge sheet. Charges were deliberately framed against the accused. The court noted that the report of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) regarding the iPad was not made available and in spite of all this the charge sheet has been filed.