A 47-year-old woman has moved the Gujarat High Court alleging that policemen in plain clothes had taken her from her home to a police station in a private vehicle at night, and detained her there until the early hours of the morning in violation of the law and guidelines of the Supreme Court.
A Division Bench of the court on Thursday (October 1) issued notice after counsel for Rathod submitted that police had tried to force her to testify against a woman friend in the murder case, drawn samples of her blood without her consent, and asked her questions about an alleged “unnatural relationship” among the three women.
A woman’s mysterious murder
Early on August 24, the parents of Nidhi Kumari returned from a trip to discover their 25-year-old daughter dead in the house. According to the FIR registered at Mandvi police station, Nidhi was allegedly killed by robbers who took away jewellery, cash, and her mobile phone. The stolen property was valued at Rs 2.52 lakh.
Police initially named unknown persons as accused in the alleged murder. But they later arrested a woman named Alpa, whom Nidhi had allegedly met while on a walk after dinner, shortly before she died.
Rathod is a friend of Alpa’s. In her petition filed through advocate Utkarsh Dave, Rathod has said that she had stayed at Alpa’s home for about a week or 10 days before the alleged murder, and had returned to her own home on the day that Nidhi died.
Alleged detention, questioning
Rathod has alleged that police contacted her by phone and WhatsApp because she was staying with Alpa at the time of the alleged murder.
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She has said that she cooperated with police, but they still showed up at her residence and took her to Mandvi police station without a summons or written order.
According to Rathod, even after she was allowed to leave the police station, police officers had continued to contact her, including on WhatsApp, and had allegedly called her to appear for questioning again without issuing formal summons.
Rathod has alleged that police seized her mobile phone, and collected samples of her blood under coercion. She has alleged that investigators wanted her to become a witness or approver to implicate her friend Alpa.
Advocate Dave informed the court that Rathod was “not an accused in the FIR and was, at most, being treated as a witness” by the investigators. However, police were “attempting to establish an unnatural relationship between Rathod, Alpa and the deceased (Nidhi)”, he said.
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This last allegation about the alleged “unnatural relationship” is, however, not a part of the petition filed before the court.
Rathod’s lawyer submitted verbally on Thursday that investigators had questioned her on this subject, and had sought to connect the alleged relationship among the three women with the circumstances of Nidhi’s murder.
It was clarified before the Bench that this allegation had “not been set out in the petition because it could not be substantiated at that stage”.
The explicit allegations in the petition are only that police detained/ questioned Rathod, sought to make her a witness/ approver against Alpa, and took her blood sample and phone without her consent.
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The petition also states that Rathod – the petition describes her as “Dr Rathod” – is unmarried and into “spiritual” learning.
Her lawyer mentioned the fact that she was single in his oral submissions before the court, saying that police were probing the alleged “unnatural relationship” among the women only because Rathod was not married, and had lived with a woman friend (Alpa) for a few days.
Alleged violation of SC guidelines
Rathod has named individual police officers and described their alleged roles during her detention.
Advocate Dave told the Bench of Justices N S Sanjay Gowda and J L Odedara on Thursday that the alleged conduct of the police officers was particularly serious because there was an officer of the level of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) among them.
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According to Rathod’s petition, the alleged conduct of the police was in violation of the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in the landmark ‘D K Basu vs State of West Bengal’ case of 1997. Some of these guidelines were subsequently codified in law as amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC).
Rathod has sought contempt proceedings against the police officers, alleging wilful disobedience of the safeguards laid down in ‘D K Basu’. She has also sought directions concerning preservation and production of records relating to her alleged detention and interrogation.
The HC on Thursday issued notice to the officials concerned and will hear the matter next on October 26.
