The Kerala High Court on Monday severely criticised the police for not probing properly the sensational sex scandal at the Southern Naval Command headquarters, Kochi in which serious offences like wife-swapping among officers were alleged. The court said the police were trying to protect the first accused, a Navy lieutenant who allegedly forced his wife to share bed with his superiors.
Rejecting the lieutenant’s anticipatory bail plea, Justice B Kamal pasha said that the police had effectively reduced a case of serious sexual abuse into one of domestic violence. This was a shame for the Kerala Police, said the judge and instructed the police to carry out detailed investigation on the complaint filed by the lieutenant’s wife.
The case pertains to the alleged sexual harassment and other forms of torture the woman had suffered in the hands of her husband, his superiors and others at the Naval Base in Kochi prior to April this year.
Defence Minister AK Antony had ordered the Navy to hold a probe into the allegations while the Kerala Police began investigations on the woman’s complaint.
Though the allegations leveled by the lieutenant’s wife were
serious enough for registering a case for sexual abuse, the police had handled this as one of
marital discord (a position the Navy had been adopting from the very beginning of the scandal), Justice Pasha said. He demanded an explanation from the police for not taking a case for sexual abuse on the woman’s complaint.
The 26-year-old woman had on April 2 lodged a complaint with the Harbour police station in Kochi stating that her husband had been forcing her to sleep with his superior officers and that she was harassed physically and mentally buy him, his colleagues and his superiors. Even spouses of some of the husband’s colleagues had tortured him for disregarding his demands.
The Harbour police had
registered a case against a Commodore, four lieutenants including the woman’s husband, a Captain (all stationed then at the Kochi Naval Base), his wife and three of the husband’s relatives on various charges including
domestic violence, coercion into sexual abuse and unlawful custody.
According to the 26-year-old woman, a resident of Delhi hailing from Odisha, her husband used to force her to share bed with his superiors after the “immoral” evening parties being held at the Naval Base almost on a regular basis. “They (the senior Navy officers) are swapping their wives,” the woman had told the media after lodging a complaint with the police.
The woman had also said that there used to be regular evening parties at the Naval Base in Kochi and that these parties were venues for immoral interactions among the participants. She said that her husband used to force her to sleep with senior officials after such parties, adding that her efforts to complain to Navy officials had failed due to non-cooperation.
The Navy was quick to deny the allegations through a release saying, “In cases of marital discord, there are bound to be bitter acrimony and mutual accusation” It said that the lieutenant’s colleagues and their spouses had been trying only to “resolve the issue dogging the couple’s personal life”.