Around a quarter of complaints (24%) filed by women in the Millennium City are dismissed after an investigation. Most of these complaints were found to be the result of personal rivalry, family disputes and some were even false ones. In several cases, it was observed that the complainant either changed her statement or withdrew the cases, said a police officer.
By November this year, the city police had registered 1,253 complaints of rape, molestation, dowry, trafficking and others. Out of these 299 cases were dismissed in which the investigation didn’t find concrete evidence, the officer added.
In the previous year, around 382 cases were dropped out of 1,202 registered cases. The police data show that as many as 35 of the total 131 rape cases filed in the district this year until November was cancelled and remaining cases are under investigation or under trial.
“About 77 of the 303 complaints of molestation filed with city police this year until November have been cancelled. Most of them were the result of personal rivalry, job-related issues and family disputes,” police officers said.
Also, 131 of the 325 cases of forcing a woman to accompany her in the first 11 months of this year were found to be fake. last year, the police had cancelled 157 such cases.
According to investigating officers, molestation and rape cases fell flat when the complainants turned hostile when they were asked to make a statement under Cr PC section 164 before the magistrate. This is mandatory in sexual assault cases. The complainants themselves confessed that their allegations were not true and they wished to close the case.
“The cancellation of these cases is unfortunate. Most of the complainants stated different reasons to retract their statements or wanted to cancel the cases,” Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Pankhuri, said.
However, police officers admitted that not all cases where the complainants had turned hostile could be marked fake. “They may have had backed out because of the fear of ‘being defamed’ or pressure from the family.
Also in some cases, we found that complaints just did not match with the sequence of crime, which means it was a false complaint or such incident had not taken place at all,” a senior officer said.
“The complainant must understand that once the case has been filed, the investigation officer (IO) of the said case spends lot of time in the case. Once the complaint retracts from her statement, the entire case is ruined”, rued the officer. Police is left with no other option than to petition the court to cancel the case.
“The cancellation report submitted by the investigation officer goes to the SHO, who then forwards it to the area ACP. Finally, the concerned DCP looks into it. Then, the cancellation report is sent to the court and it is only then that the case is cancelled,” the ACP said.