JAMMU: Describing the Khour incident of rape and extortion as highly obnoxious and profligate, Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman JKNPP and former Minister, observed that the episode symbolised the most abominable decline in standards of probity and morality in police force.
He said that the mode and manner in which the Khour couple was abused, assaulted, humiliated, manhandled, tortured, sexploited and looted exposes the State Police at its ugliest.
Ridiculing the State Government and the police authorities for patting their back for having booked the delinquent SHO, Singh said that the common man was fast losing faith in the Police Department whose monstrous and ruthless conduct had assumed alarming proportions over the years.
He said Khour episode was only a tip of the ice berg and was exposed only because of the initiatives of an alert media and that there were several such incidents of rape, loot, murder etc. which had gone unnoticed or had been thrown under the carpet. He said that the likes of Khour case which reveal the horrendous face of the Police Force were so obnoxious as to squirm even the greatest of champions of Human Rights in their graves but regretted that the mandated leaders of Jammu including ministers and legislators shamelessly kept mum. He added that when the security forces were falsely accused of having harassed a girl in Kashmir, the entire Valley boiled with public outrage but the so called champions of Jammu refused to utter a word despite the most outrageous and barbaric conduct and sexploitation by police in Jammu. He regretted that the leaders who raised a storm at the drop of hat had shut their eyes to the most heinous and barbaric acts being committed in their own govt. for lust of power. He said that the victim girl was not only tortured, humiliated, raped but would also have to undergo a lifelong mental trauma and hence sought a compensation of Rs. 20 lakh to her.
Seeking a complete revamp of administration of the police, Harsh further sought to know as to why only a selected few of the police officers were repeatedly posted as SHOs, SDPOs and District Police Chiefs. He said that there were several honest officers also in the Deptt. who were required to be identified and given important postings. Contrarily the corrupt and the tainted should be dealt with strictly he added, pointing towards a Supreme Court judgment in May 2015 in which it said that it did not believe that a corrupt public servant would reform himself and hence needed no sympathy.