Ghaziabad child rape-murder: SC says police and hospitals inhuman, insensitive

New Delhi: Supreme Court on Friday said the mishandling of the brutal sexual assault and murder of a four-year-old girl in Ghaziabad reflected “inhuman, indifferent and insensitive” attitude of police and private hospitals and that the incident warranted a court-monitored time-bound probe by a central agency or SIT.

Narrating how a daily wager’s child was raped and bludgeoned to death by a neighbour, senior advocate N Hariharan told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi that while two private hospitals refused treatment to the injured girl, who died while being taken to a govt hospital, the police locked up the parents and assaulted them for insisting on registering an FIR, which was registered a day later on March 17.

“The petition not only reveals this diabolic offence but also highlights the alleged approach of two private hospitals and the officers of the local police station (Nandgram), which is completely indifferent, inhuman, and insensitive,” an anguished CJI said.

Summoning the Ghaziabad police commissioner along with the Nandgram SHO to remain present in court with case records and inquest report on April 13, the bench sought responses from Khajan Singh Manvi Health Care and St Joseph Hospital, both of which refused to admit the injured child. Hariharan said if timely treatment was given, the girl might have survived.

The bench recorded in its order that the parents and their relatives’ trauma was aggravated when the local police, instead of taking cognisance of the “horrifying offence, locked them up and physically assaulted them with an admonition to remain silent about the incident”. This incident comes within days of the SC constituting an SIT to probe the rape of a four-year-old child in Gurgaon.

The court also faulted the doctor who prepared the post-mortem report for failing to mention aggravated sexual assault despite recording “several wounds and the presence of blood on the victim’s private parts, apart from various injuries on her head and other body parts”.

It said police displayed an even more callous attitude by registering only a murder case after a delay and refusing to invoke sexual assault charges under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act and relevant provisions of BNS.

“The facts and circumstances of this case prick the conscience of this court. We are satisfied that to ensure complete justice for the petitioner and his family, an immediate, court-monitored, time-bound investigation by a central independent investigating agency or a special investigation team is required,” the CJI-led bench said.

When Hariharan mentioned that the police continued to threaten the girl’s protesting parents by invoking the process under BNSS to keep peace in the area, the bench directed the police “not to take any coercive action against the petitioner, his family members, his neighbours, or other witnesses, including those against whom proceedings under Section 130 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, are said to have been initiated”.
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