Army Major booked for ‘raping’ domestic help

THE OFFICER HAS BEEN BOOKED UNDER INDIAN PENAL CODE SECTIONS PERTAINING TO RAPE, MOLESTATION, CRIMINAL INTIMIDATION AND VOLUNTARILY CAUSING HURT, POLICE SAID

NEWDELHI: An Indian Army Major was booked for allegedly raping his 26-year-old domestic help whose husband allegedly committed “suicide” hours after the alleged rape two months ago, police said on Sunday.

Even though the alleged rape took place on July 12, the first information report (FIR) was registered on September 28 after a city court ordered the police to file a case.

In her plea in the court, the woman had alleged that her husband, who was found hanging in his house on July 13, was murdered and that police were not registering an FIR.

The Major who is posted at the Sena Bhawan in Delhi has not been arrested yet. “We are investigating the allegations,” said Devender Arya, deputy commissioner of police (southwest).

The officer has been booked under Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to rape, molestation, criminal intimidation and voluntarily causing hurt, DCP Arya said.

When asked to explain the delay in filing of the FIR, no official from Delhi Police was willing to come on record.

An investigator, requesting not to be identified, however, claimed that the FIR was not registered as “initial investigation and CCTV footage had suggested that the Major was not present in the house at the time of the alleged rape”.

The police said the autopsy report suggested her husband had committed suicide.

The woman, a mother of two, and her husband had been employed by the Major at his Delhi Cantonment residence three months before the alleged crime. “We cleaned and cooked for the officer and were paid ₹1,000 every month. We lived in the servants’ quarters in his house,” the woman told the police in her statement.

The woman said that on July 12, the officer sent her husband out on an errand at 10pm and told her to accompany him to his bedroom. “When I refused, he slapped me and began molesting me. As my husband returned and saw what was happening, he objected. The officer threatened to shoot him and started assaulting him,” the woman alleged.

She alleged the Major then threw her husband out of the house and knocked her unconscious. “When I regained consciousness, I found myself disrobed and the officer lying on the bed and drinking alcohol,” she said in her complaint.

She claimed the officer then told her that he would kill her husband if he ever tried to stand up to him again. The woman alleged that the officer raped her again before instructing her to go to her sister-in-law’s house nearby.

“At 12.30am (July 13), the officer came to my sister-in-law’s house and told me my husband had committed suicide,” she alleged.

Indian Army spokesperson Colonel Aman Anand issued a statement saying that the police probe did not find any “substantial evidence to prove rape and murder”.

“The maid servant filed a case of rape, but police didn’t find merit in the case, so they did not lodge an FIR,” said the Colonel.