POLICEMAN GETS 1-YEAR JAIL TERM FOR MOLESTING LADY COLLEAGUE

MUMBAI: A metropolitan magistrate court on Saturday sentenced a 50-year-old police officer to one-year imprisonment for molesting and stalking a woman colleague. The complaint of the woman was registered only after she had approached the Internal Complaints Committee.

The metropolitan magistrate, Nadeem Patel, observed, “The age of the accused shows that he is a grown-up man. He is a police officer despite knowing the consequences of his act committed the offence. Therefore, if unwarranted leniency is shown then it will send a wrong signal to the society.”

“The informant is married. She will not put her family at stake only to falsely implicate the accused. After filing several applications, the FIR was not registered. Therefore, she was fed up with the harassment and went to the extent of consuming sleeping pills, which landed her in the hospital,” the court added.

As per the complaint, lodged by the woman police officer, she worked at a police station in south Mumbai since 2013 and the accused was posted in the same police station. She said, in 2016, the accused had helped her get treatment at a private hospital after she had developed an allergy and thereafter the two shared good relations.

In November 2017, she added, the accused called her at Kemps Corner and when she went there, he held her hand and expressed his “love” for her. The woman left the place.

She alleged that even thereafter the accused kept calling her and harassing her and when she tried to lodge a complaint, she was dissuaded by her seniors.

The woman claimed that she then approached the deputy commissioner of police and the commissioner of police, but no action was taken and the FIR was registered only after she approached the Internal Complaints Committee.

The accused in his defence claimed that the woman lodged a complaint only after her husband came to know about their relationship. The magistrate court, after hearing both sides, held the accused guilty.