Taking a suo motu note of a report sent by a Metropolitan Magistrate (MM) on a news report published in The Hindu on May 11 focussing on how the owners of a brothel house here intimidated a girl inside a trial court where she had been produced by the Delhi Police after rescuing her from the Capital’s red light area, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought replies from the Delhi Government and the Delhi Police in the matter.
The Court had sought a report from the MM after reading the news story in the paper.
Seeking replies from the police and the Government by July 10, a Division Bench of Justice Darmar Murugesan and Justice Jayant Nath asked them also to explain why the charge of gang-rape was not invoked against the culprits.
“They did not even file an FIR of the gang-rape charge,’’ the Bench said, adding that “they (brothel owners) threatened the girl sitting in the courtroom to bring her back into the business.’’
The Bench later appointed Zubeda Begum as amicus curiae to assist the Court in the matter.
According to the report, the 19-year-old girl was kept confined within a small cavity in the walls of a brothel at G.B. Road. During this period she was continuously raped .
But even after she was rescued, the Delhi Police did not deem it fit to register a gang-rape case. Rather, it even allowed her rapists, abductors and brothel owners to intimidate her during her court presence, the report stated.
The tragic tale had begun this February when the girl was preparing for her Class X Board examinations.
Based on the limited conversation that her brother had with her after her rescue, one evening when she came out of her village house in West Bengal, a drug-laced cloth was pressed against her face which made her unconscious.
“When she came back to her senses, she found herself at the Howrah railway station accompanied by the abductor and few others who told her that they were waiting for a train to Delhi. As she protested, they made her consume some more sedatives and she then regained consciousness only on reaching Delhi,” said the girl’s brother, Imran (name changed).
