On Friday, March 12th, the Madras High Court displayed its content with the way in which the matter of the women IPS officer’s sexual harassment case is being investigated, against a special DGP.
Single Bench of Justice, Mr. N. Anand Venkatesh, keeping in mind that the issue and depth of the problem are quite sensitive, stated that it was necessary that the matter is handled with immense maturity and that both the State, as well as the Court, must maintain neutrality. The Court highly criticized the alleged incident and also expressed displeasure at the manner in which the Special DGP allegedly used his contacts and power to prevent the victim officer from even filing a complaint against him.
The Judge had expressed his concern regarding the fact that if an officer holding such a high rank in Indian Police Services can be harassed and be forced to back out from filing a complaint, then what would happen if the common netizens face such agony.
Moreover, the Court was hearing a plea seeking issuance of directions to the CB-CID to effectively conduct the investigation in the matter, duly monitored by the High Court. The Plea further directed to submit a periodical status report on the progress made in the investigation before this Court and to finish the complete investigation as soon as possible.
Keeping in mind that simply discussing a case from all quarters wouldn’t yield the effective results, the Court posted the case for receiving the ‘status report’ on 16th March, 2021.
