Mangaluru, June 27, 2023: The District Additional and POCSO Special Court of Mangaluru has slapped penalty on three senor police officials for shielding the accused and filing cases against innocents in a POCSO case.

The Court has directed Circle Inspector Lokesh AC, Sub-Inspectors Srikala and Pushparani to pay a total of Rs 5 lakh penalty to the victims.

The three officials had failed to properly investigating the case, have provided wrong information to the court and had also committed dereliction of duty in submitting documents, the court has said.

The accused officials instead of filing case against the real accused had without evidence registered cases against labourers Chandrappa and Prasad. The Judge K M Radhakrishna in his order has said a Rs 4 lakh has to be paid to Chandrappa and Rs 1 lakh to Prasad who have been proved innocent, within 40 days of the order.

The Court has also directed that stern action be taken against the officials by sending the copies of the order to the Chief Secretary of the State Government and the city police commissioner.

The case: The victim girl hails from Vidyanagar Makki in Shirthady village of Moodbidri taluk and lives with her parents and her brother. The parents are labourers. On 15-07-2022, the girl had lodged a complaint at the women’s police station in Mangaluru alleging that Prasad who hailed from her village had raped her and was responsible for her pregnancy. Later in her statement before the JMFC Court too she had repeated her statement. Accordingly the police had arrested Prasad and produced him before the court.

Later, when women’s police station SI Srikala secured the girl’s statement again, she revealed that it was not Prasad but her owner Sandesh who raped her. Later in the JMFC Court too she said fearing Sandesh she had named Prasad as the accused. Later on 12-10-202 when SI Srikala again questioned the girl, she had changed her statement saying it was her father Chandrappa who raped her. On this basis the police arrested Chandrappa and produced him before the court.

The investigation officer, the then Circle Inspector of the women’s police station Lokesh AC is facing charges of dereliction of duty for failing to register case against the accused. It has also alleged that the blood samples of one Ratnappa against whom there was no case, and Chandrappa was sent to the Forensic laboratory and that Sandesh’s blood samples were not sent for DNA test.