Chandigarh, April 23
Used to being part of an all-male investigation team, Haryana Police sub-inspector Rajesh Kumari has independently handled investigations in five cases during the last three months. From merely “being there” to fulfil the mandatory requirement of having a police woman present during rape investigations, Rajesh Kumari is now a full-fledged Investigating Officer, like several police women across Haryana.

This “empowerment” comes following a three-month-old Haryana Police directive to appoint only women as Investigation Officers in all cases under Section 376 of the IPC right from their registration. The initiative was taken to put rape victims at ease as investigation progressed. Complete compliance, however, was achieved only recently after the department took action against a few erring police personnel.

The Haryana Police’s Crime Against Women cell, headed by ADGP KK Misra, had asked the IGs of all four ranges to redistribute available staff in a fashion that each police station had at least one police woman of the rank of sub-inspector (SI) or assistant sub-inspector (ASI) to carry out investigations.

Despite the directive, field staff continued to appoint policemen as Investigating Officers.

While a month was given to readjust staff, daily crime reports received by ADGP’s office as late as February showed that investigations in rape cases were being handled by policemen.

In one such case, the Sonepat SP was advised to tell his SHOs to handover the investigation of rape cases to women Investigating Officers. In seven other cases, the department sent out a warning to field staff to follow the directive to a tee.

In two cases in Sirsa and Gurgaon, the department recommended action against police officers for continuing to allocate rape investigation to policemen. This finally sent out the message and police women began being assigned these cases. In Ballabhgarh, SI Kamlesh Devi admits the directive has added “substance” to the work of policewomen, who were generally kept away from hardcore investigation and were an “add-on” where they could not be wished away. “The focus was to make the rape victim as comfortable as possible given her state of trauma. However, it achieved the twin objective of empowering our women cops since police women in semi-urban and rural areas didn’t get to conduct investigations. The exercise was carried out to implement the provisions of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, which are rarely followed,” Misra said.

Now, the department has forwarded a proposal to the Haryana Government to directly recruit 100 more women sub-inspectors. Though, every police station currently has either a woman ASI or an SI, the department wants to depute an SI at every police station. Only half the state’s police stations currently have women SIs.