Yogesh K Porwar.Avanth Kumar Kankaria
A woman inspector and two of her colleagues were suspended on Thursday after a police inquiry found them guilty of forcing a street vendor to smoke ganja and fixing him in a false drugs case when he failed to pay the bribe.
Bengaluru City Police Commissioner,Kamal Pant issued the suspension order of RMC Yard police inspector, Parvathamma,PSI, Anjinappa,and Constable,Umesh till further orders following a report by DCP,North,Dharmender Kumar Meena.
The case exposes police high-handedness in Bengaluru.The action by the police top brass came after the victim tried to kill himself because of the drug stigma,and his family filed a complaint.
Senior officer told reporters,On July 14,around 8 pm,RMC Yard police inspector,Parvathamma picked up two men,Shivaraj and Nagendra,who were chatting outside their home near Poojamma Temple Road in Goraguntepalya.
She bundled them into her patrol car and took them to the police station.The men had to spend the entire night in the lock-up without even knowing what their crime was.Police officers allegedly demanded bribes for their release.
The next day,police let Nagendra go after booking him in a petty case but Shivaraj,45,wasn’t so lucky.He was forced to smoke a ganja cigarette and take a medical test.
Eventually, police booked him under the stringent Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.Shivaraj got bail on July 17 but was so traumatised by the turn of events that he consumed poison in order to kill himself.
His family rushed him to hospital in the nick of time and doctors were able to save him.
The family decided to escalate the matter and complained to the DCP on July 19.Besides Parvathamma,they named, sub-inspector Anjanappa and two police constables.
Dharmendra Kumar Meena,the DCP,summoned the four police officers for an inquiry and questioned them separately.But the clinching evidence was a mobile phone video recording of the incident the DCP submitted in the report to senior officers.
The video shows Parvathamma picking up Shivaraj and Nagendra from their house.This was with the FIR’s claim that Shivaraj was picked up from Kuvempu Circle around 1 pm on July 14 by a constable named Eranna.
But according to the FIR,Shivaraj was picked up while he was returning home but he wasn’t drunk. The constable suspected he had taken drugs and took him to the police station.Shivaraj was later subjected to a medical test at a private hospital in Cox Town,which confirmed drug consumption, the FIR states.
According to the report, submitted by DCP Meena,Parvathamma detained two youths near Goraguntepalya on the night of July 14 while on patrol duty one of them was smoking a cigarette and threw it away on seeing the police vehicle.
The cops assumed he was consuming drugs and disposed them of on seeing them.He was taken to RMC Yard police station.There,the four cops gave him a cigarette filled with ganja and told him to smoke it, the report read.
As per the inquiry conducted by ACP, Yeshwanthpura Sub-Division it was found that the only reason Shivaraj was framed in the false case was that he couldn’t pay a bribe. He didn’t have any money as his groundnut business suffered in the lockdown.
After receiving a detailed investigation report DCP,Meena summoned all the four police personnel including inspector and sub inspector Anjanapa while questioning DCP Meena,grew suspicious on the body language of PSI and when he saw Anjinappa repeatedly touching the right pocket of his trousers and directed his staff to frisk the SI.
While frisking they found Anjinappa was recording his conversation with the senior officer by switching on the recorder of his mobile phone 14 minutes of the talk had been recorded secretly recorded the conversation on his mobile phone.
The police officers have been suspended until further orders says order issued by commissioner of police Kamal Pant and he warned all the police personnel that strict action will be taken if they indulge in illegal activities he added.
