The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Tuesday, August 20, 2002, Chandigarh, India

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NHRC rejects Madhu’s plea
Sharma family fears elimination by Delhi cops
Tribune News Service

Mrs Madhu Sharma, wife of Mr Ravi Kant Sharma, and their daughters talk to newspersons out side the National Human Rights Commission in the Capital on Monday.
— Tribune photo Mukesh Aggarwal

New Delhi, August 19
The National Human Rights Commission today rejected the complaint of Mrs Madhu Sharma against the Delhi police for harassing and torturing her family members on the grounds that it could not do anything to help her as her husband was an absconder. Mrs Sharma said NHRC officials told her that the commission had "no teeth as it depended on the government for the implementation of its orders."

Mrs Sharma has planned to move the Supreme Court, even as his application for anticipatory bail is coming for hearing in the Delhi High Court tomorrow.

Mrs Madhu Sharma was mobbed by mediapersons who were waiting for her in the Sardar Patel Bhavan. Mrs Sharma, wife of Haryana Inspector-General of Police Ravi Kant Sharma wanted in connection with the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar, met the NHRC Director-General (Investigation) Y.S. Sharma to make a personal plea.

Flanked by her daughters Komal and Pragati, Mrs Sharma said the commission refused her request, saying that in the circumstances, it could not do anything to help her as her husband was an absconder.

“We had approached the NHRC as the last resort to get justice. But here also we did not get justice as the government is not on our side. We have no rights,” she added. About the NHRC's observation that her husband was an absconder, she said, “He is not an absconder. They don’t know what is absconder in legal terms. Besides, we had not approached the NHRC for him. We had approached it to ensure for our own safety.”

“What happens to those who fight the government? I had approached the NHRC as we are fighting the government machinery. Do we have no civil rights in this country?” she asked and expressed fears of her family being liquidated by the Delhi police.

Mrs Sharma said that she had sent a complaint by fax on August 12 to the NHRC, stating that her family was being terrorised and threatened by the Delhi police. The police was not only tapping their telephone but that of her lawyer also. The Delhi police is going to each and every person known to us and threatening them,” she said.

“Even my would be son-in-law Amresh Mishra, who is a known writer, was not spared. He was picked up by the police last week and told that they would name him as the fourth accused in the case,” she said.

The wife and daughters of Haryana Inspector-General of Police Ravi Kant Sharma, wanted in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case, today alleged that their civil liberties were at stake and feared that the Delhi police would ‘eliminate’ the entire family.

“We fear that the Delhi police will kill us and that is why we had sought protection from the National Human Rights Commission, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Chief Justice of India. But there is nobody to protect us,” they claimed. “Where do we go? There is no protection for our civil liberties,” Mrs Madhu Sharma and her daughters alleged.

Mrs Sharma said the family wanted to meet the Prime Minister because they wanted to tell him about the involvement of a minister. “When you want to complain against a reporter, you go to the Editor. Similarly, if somebody wants to complain against a Minister, she will have to go to the Prime Minister,” she told reporters after her application was rejected by the NHRC.

Asked who the minister was, she shot back, “(Information Technology Minister) Pramod Mahajan. I have said this several times now.”

When a reporter asked her why the Delhi police wanted to kill them, Mrs Sharma said, ‘’You want to know, come and stay with us and we will show you why are we saying this.” Thereafter, she took the reporter along with her in her car to the place where the family was staying in the Capital.

They alleged that the officials of the Crime Branch were stalking the family and their relatives and attempting to frame them. “Wherever we go, Crime Branch officials follow us and unnecessarily try to drag in everybody related to us in the case,” Mrs Sharma alleged.

She said Mr Amresh Mishra, fiance of her elder daughter, was told by a police official to either make a statement against Sharma or he would be implicated in the case as the fourth killer.