No rape complaint received against Jind school principal: Police

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, November 29

The police will initiate an investigation into the allegations of rape being levelled by an activist against the accused principal of a Jind school if there is a complaint, said a police official, adding that no one had approached them in this regard.

Samyukta Kisan Morcha activist Sikkim Nain had alleged that he had information about the rape of a girl when she was a student of class XI. The victim, however, dropped out of school about two years ago and had been under psychiatric treatment due to mental trauma.

Jind SP Sumit Kumar said investigation had been going on in the case and there was no addition of any more Sections of the IPC or the POCSO Act in the case.

Vikram Mittal, an advocate, stated that under Section 19 (1) of the POCSO Act, any person who had knowledge that such an offence had been committed, shall provide information to the local police or the special juvenile police. Quoting Section 20 of the Act, he stated, “Any personnel of the media or hotel or lodge or hospital or club or studio or photographic facilities, by whatever name called, irrespective of the number of persons employed therein, shall, on coming across any material or object which is sexually exploitative of the child (including pornographic, sexually-related or making obscene representation of a child or children) through the use of any medium, shall provide such information to the Special Juvenile Police Unit, or to the local police, as the case may be”.

Another advocate, Manmohan Rai, maintained that the police had enough powers to investigate such allegations without a formal complaint. “The police can approach the court for permission to conduct a lie-detector test and narco-analysis of the accused about such allegations. If the court gives permission, these tests could provide leads for pressing charges of rape against him,” he stated.

The Supreme Court, in Lalita Kumari vs Government of U.P. & Ors, on November 12, 2013, had ordered that, “Registration of FIR is mandatory under Section 154 of the Code, if the information discloses commission of a cognisable offence and no preliminary inquiry is permissible in such a situation. If the information received does not disclose a cognisable offence, but indicates the necessity for an inquiry, a preliminary inquiry may be conducted only to ascertain whether cognisable offence is disclosed or not”.