Court seeks state reply on delay in FIR, medical report goof-up

Expressing its displeasure over the manner in which police acted in the Bhopal gang rape incident and the subsequent goof-up in the medical examination of the woman, a bench of the Jabalpur high court, headed by chief justice Hemant Gupta, asked the state government to submit an action taken report in the case.

The matter will be next heard on November 27.

“It was a tragedy of errors,” said the bench even as the state government presented its side.

The matter came up for a hearing on Monday as justice Gupta had taken suo moto cognizance of a Hindustan Times report titled “Bhopal gang rape: Junked medical report said sex was consensual, Congress alleges cover-up”.

The bench, comprising justice Gupta and justice Vijay Shukla, pulled up the government for the delay in lodging of the FIR in connection with the incident and also carelessness in the medical examination report.

Advocate general Purushendra Kaurav informed court that five police personnel and two doctors had been placed under suspension. The charge sheet in the case would be filed in the next 15 days. Similarly, a charge sheet against the concerned police personnel and doctors would be issued within the next 15 days.

Placing the chain of events before the court, Kaurav said the government wouldn’t spare anyone in the case and an awareness programme would be launched to sensitise police personnel to crimes against women.

Talking to HT, Kaurav said they apprised the court of the fact that the errors in the medical examination report were inadvertent due to pressure of work on the doctors. Logically, there couldn’t be ‘consent’ in a ‘rape case’ and since the ‘accused’ were not in the scene as far as preparation of the medical examination report was concerned, the word ‘accused’ crept into the report inadvertently in place of ‘victim’.

A 19-year-old civil services aspirant was gang-raped hardly 100m away from the Habibganj railway station on October 31 by four miscreants while she was on her way to catch a train for Vidisha, her home town, from her coaching institute in MP Nagar.

The woman and her father had to run from one police station to another to get the FIR lodged. Later, there was a blunder in the medical exam report prepared by two postgraduate doctors. The report, which was later junked by senior doctors, said there was consensual sex as per the ‘accused’.

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