Lucknow:
A 10-year-old girl sits on the floor behind a mesh screen, which serves as a holding bay, at a women's police station in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh. This was the response of women constables when the child was brought here by her mother, alleging that the girl had been raped.
On Sunday night, the distraught mother told the women officer that a 24-year-old local villager had sexually assaulted her child.
A police case was registered and the child and mother were sent to local hospital for medical tests.
On Monday morning, they returned to the police station and women officers there allegedly forced the mother to leave and locked up the young girl.
A local free-lance television journalist who heard of the case rushed to the police station and managed to film the girl.
The reporter then took the footage to the district top cop to ask for assistance. The cop in charge of the station, Mrs Gayashree Chauhan, allegedly denied that the child had been locked up, despite the fact that there was video evidence.
As punishment, she and another Senior Inspector were transferred on Monday evening by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Gulab Singh. Two constables were suspended.
The child has been sent home to her mother.
Three months ago, India was pulverised by the fatal gang-rape of a young student on a Delhi bus. Anger and a call for change gridded cities together. The government responded by promising to provide better policing for women and tougher laws to punish crimes against them.
The new laws require a female officer to record molestation and rape complaints.
The Bulandshahr case proves that unless the police is sensitised and better trained to handle cases of sexual crimes against women, the new laws run the risk of being ignored in practice.