The Hindu : Front Page : Six-month imprisonment for Additional DGP Prem Shanker

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Tuesday, Jan 13, 2009
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Six-month imprisonment for Additional DGP Prem Shanker

Special Correspondent

Assault on Editor of Kannur-based evening daily

The Editor had published stories against the police
He was arrested for publishing the name of a rape victim

KOCHI: Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate P.D. Soman on Monday sentenced senior IPS officer K.G. Prem Shanker, Additional Director-General of Police (Human Rights), and three other police officers to six months’ simple imprisonment on charges of assaulting a Kannur-based journalist, the late Maniyeri Madhavan, in 1988.

The officers who were awarded the sentence were Abdul Gafoor, Sub-Inspector, Kannur Town; P. Jayaraj, Circle Inspector, Kannur; and R.V. Kunhikannan, Sub-Inspector. The court acquitted eight other police personnel who were arraigned as accused in the case. The magistrate, however, kept the operation of the sentence in abeyance to enable the convicts to appeal before the district court.

The court directed the convicted persons to pay Rs.25,000 as compensation to the legal heir of Madhavan. The court observed that the prosecution had been able to prove the case. The court said the arrest of Madhavan was unjustified and illegal. The investigation was conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation on a directive from the Supreme Court.

Prosecution case

Maniyeri Madhavan was the Editor, Printer and Publisher of the evening daily Sudinam. The prosecution case was that during 1987-1988 Madhavan had published many news stories against the police, particularly Prem Shanker, the then Kannur Superintendent of Police. Those had infuriated Prem Shanker and other police officers under him. They were waiting to take revenge on Madhavan.

Meanwhile, a news item appeared in the daily on February 2, 1988 saying that a 16-year-old Adivasi girl from Wayanad district who was working as a maidservant was raped. Madhavan had published the name of the victim. Since the disclosure of the identity of the rape victim who was a tribal girl amounted to an offence punishable under Section 228 A of the Indian Penal Code and Sec. 7(1) (d) of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, the accused got a complaint registered by the illiterate girl and her parents in the office of the Superintendent of Police, Wayanad.

The complaint got transmitted to the Kannur Town police station, from where the second accused K.A. Abdul Gafoor registered a case against Madhavan and others. The 12 accused hatched a criminal conspiracy and took Madhavan and his trainee-reporter into custody and physically assaulted them and damaged the printing press and other allied properties of Madhavan in the night of February 12, 1988, according to the prosecution.

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