New Delhi:
A Delhi court has awarded two years' rigorous imprisonment to a traffic police constable for assaulting and illegally detaining a woman, observing that everyday newspapers publish reports about men in uniform flouting the law.
The constable and his friend forcibly confined a woman from Odisha to a car, after she sought lift for reaching her house in 2010.
"New Delhi, the capital of India, is visited by people not only from other states but also from abroad. Every day it is published in newspapers that people in uniform are flouting the law," said District Judge HS Sharma in an order made available on Wednesday.
The judge sentenced Constable Manoj Kumar to two years' imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 13,000, saying it will be an eye opener for the erring police officials.
The court observed that the woman, a resident of Odisha, had trusted the constable to help her reach home, but he took advantage of her weakness.
People trusted police in the hope that they being in a disciplined force would adhere to the rule of law, the judge said.
"One can imagine the plight of a helpless person suffering at the hands of a person who is none other than a police official," said Sharma.
The court held Manoj Kumar guilty of assaulting the woman, intent to outrage her modesty, criminal intimidation and wrongful confinement, and awarded a year's jail to the policeman's friend Sudhir Singh Gahlot.
On May 23, 2010, evening, Manoj Kumar asked the woman to sit in a car on the pretext to dropping her home.
"Instead of dropping her near her residence, Manoj on false pretext of driving her to her house kept her locked inside the car. She was dropped near her residence at 3 a.m. the next day," said the victim's complaint, alleging that the constable outraged her modesty.