Bhopal: In a shocker from Madhya Pradesh, the state police refused to register a case of attempted murder and sexual assault against assailants after a woman was allegedly beaten up by over a dozen people and her knee caps broken while resisting rape.
The 27-year-old, a mother of one, is now lying in an orthopaedic ward in Bhopal. She was sexually assaulted by over a dozen men minutes after she returned from the Taliya police station where she had gone to seek protection from the same men on June 5. Instead of helping her, the police asked her to return with a typed complaint. Doctors have operated on her knee but she might be disabled for life.
"When I went to complain, they wrote it down, and then asked me to get it typed. When I left to get it typed these goons attacked me and beat me up," the survivor said.
While the police have arrested three, the main accused, Nafees Qureshi who assaulted her with iron rods, is still at large. The survivor, it seems, was attacked also because the accused wanted to settle a property dispute out of court.
"We had recorded the victim's statement in hospital. She had even given her thumb impression on that. They had initially named four people. Subsequently they named more people, their names have been included and we are searching for them," said Bhopal SP Arvind Saxena.
The survivor's family wants a sexual harassment and an attempt to murder case registered against the accused, but the police for now aren't listening.
Madhya Pradesh is spending crores of rupees on women welfare every year. But when it comes to actual security, it is this kind of police inaction that perhaps speaks in statistics that put Madhya Pradesh at the top in crime against women.