Earlier this month, a 28-year-old mentally challenged girl, an immigrant from Nepal, went missing on February 1 in Rohtak, Haryana and her body was discovered four days later in a village, 10 kms from Rohtak. She had been brutally assaulted and gang-raped, with injuries on her private parts, stones, sticks and used condoms found stuffed inside her and her face half eaten by animals. This was possibly the most gruesome murder to have been committed, as testified by the medical examiner too.
But there is another issue to be taken up here as well. That of the inaction by the police. While medical reports say that she was possibly raped and murdered on the same day, the family members also claim that they reported her missing the very same day, given that she was mentally challenged. Had the police made a serious effort to trace her immediately, she may have been alive today, the family laments.
“If this was the case of a woman from a higher strata of society, the police would have acted immediately. Is it because we are poor that the police refused to act?” said the victim’s sister to The Indian Express, between sobs.
It is not hard to believe that the police refused to lodge an FIR or launch a search. Given that this happens even in rape cases, a missing person’s case will hardly interest them enough to stir from their seats and start looking.
Four years ago, in 2011, I was asked to cover a story on a missing four-and-half year old girl in Chennai after the bureau got a call from her frantic father. The girl had been missing for more than five days now, he said and there was no action from the police yet. “They took two days to take down an FIR. Kept telling me she must have wandered off and she’ll be back. Now five days later, the police have not even passed on the information about her to all police stations. We checked.” Syed Noor Ahmed, the girl’s father, told us then. I was shocked at the inaction. The officials kept pointing out that they were busy with elections and short on manpower.
It was only after the ensuing media coverage taken up by all the media organisations that highlighted this delay, did the police swing into action – 11 days after the girl went missing. The state-wide manhunt that was launched resulted in the girl being found within the next four days.
Not only are cases like this ample evidence that it is high time that the police changed their ways and got into action quickly, but also that it is high time that we amend an existing law to aid this. I am talking about the 24-hour window period that the police waits for before registering a missing persons report. That law has for long been used to delay FIRs and delay taking out search parties.
On top of that there are local variants to the law. In several states, for example, the police merely notes down the name of the missing person in a register and sends out the person’s photographs to other police stations. Such cases are only investigated if the family reports a case of kidnapping. The only exception is Delhi, where recently in the matter of missing children alone, they have decreed that if the child does not turn up 24 hours after the report is filed, then an investigation must be launched.
Given the number of incidences of rape involving women and children and abduction, the 24-hour rule must be relaxed in the case of women and children at least and proper attention given to the family’s complaint. It should especially be considered in the case of differently-abled persons, both mentally and physically, because they are as vulnerable as children in this regard, even more so. Because, more often not, a missing person’s case is far more serious than just ‘wandering off’ or a case of elopement.
Not only that, the law must also be strictly enforced to make sure that any police personnel who do not follow it to the letter are strictly penalized – something that is yet to happen.
That four-year old girl in Chennai who went missing was lucky to be found before any harm came to her, thanks to media attention. But the girl in the Rohtak case who was brutally raped and assaulted and left dead wasn’t quite so lucky. Would her life have been saved if the police had swung into action immediately? We don’t know.
But given the condition in which she was found, dead for almost a full week, body partially eaten by scavengers, organs missing, she deserved the dignity of a timely full-fledged search. But who pays any attention to poor immigrants from Nepal, the sister of a domestic help? News channels did not go hounding the Rohtak police for sound bites. Except for sporadic protests in Rohtak itself and a few opposition party politicians in Haryana criticising the government, the incident itself, one of the most gruesome murders we have ever seen, did not spark a nation-wide outrage.
It was the same in the case of the Nithari serial murders too. While a number of reports were filed by anxious parents whose children have been missing from the village, many residents claimed that they had been repeatedly ignored by local authorities. Who cares if one child after another goes missing? These were poor children, living in an unknown village, Nithari, on the fringe of Noida. Nobody cared.
The residents even pointed fingers at a suspect, Surinder Koli, who later turned out to be the culprit. But the police never investigated. It was only later that when a 20-year-old girl went missing and her cell phone, still active, was traced to Koli, that they questioned him. When they dug up his yard to find the girl’s remains, they uncovered all these missing children, lying exactly where their parents had alleged they were all these years.
Today, the Rohtak police have nabbed eight suspects in the rape incident, claiming that they have already cracked the case. If they are guilty, they will be tried in court and judgement delivered as usual some 5 to 10 years down the line depending on how the police uncover evidence.
But regardless of justice being delivered, there will always be that rankling thought: would that poor mentally challenged girl be alive today had the police acted immediately? Would there have been lesser children dead in Nithari?
Image Courtesy: Reuters, BCCL
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