The Commandant of the Air Force Administrative College (AFAC), Coimbatore, and senior officers forced the woman officer, who was allegedly raped by a Flight Lieutenant, to withdraw the charges against the perpetrator, according to the First Information Report registered by the police.
The rape survivor has also alleged in her police complaint that she was subjected to the two-finger test at the Air Force Hospital (AFH). The woman officer said she found out only later that the test should not be done to ascertain rape.
The All Women Police Station, Coimbatore central, registered the FIR on September 20. The accused, Amitesh Harmukh, was arrested on the charge of rape on September 25.
The alleged incident took place in the room of the woman officer between 12.30 a.m. and 3 a.m. on September 10. The accused trespassed into her room and committed the crime, allegedly under the influence of alcohol. The woman officer and the accused, who had come to the AFAC for a training course, had attended a party at the officers’ mess bar on the evening of September 9. She had taken a painkiller following an injury in the ankle while playing earlier in the day.
According to the FIR, the accused, whose marriage was fixed, met two friends of the survivor on the evening of September 10 and narrated what happened the previous night. The two batch-mates also recorded the conversation they had with the accused, said the FIR.
As suggested by one of the friends, the matter was conveyed to a Wing Commander who came to her room. A woman Wing Commander also came to the room later and told the survivor that she needed to think of all aspects, including herself and her family’s name. Later, the two senior officers suggested that she go ahead with a complaint and asked her to convey her decision the next morning. Afraid that her identity would be revealed, the survivor told the woman Wing Commander through a friend on September 11 that she did not want to make any complaint.
In the afternoon, she was asked by the two Wing Commanders to either file a complaint or give in writing that the incident was consensual. The survivor chose to go ahead with the complaint, said the FIR. The two officers told her to undergo a medical examination at the AFH where the two-finger test was done in the evening.
The survivor said in her complaint that she handed over the bed sheet she used on the day of the incident to the two women doctors at the hospital and asked the hospital authorities to collect the mattress cover which had semen stains, said the FIR.
The complainant and her room-mate were shifted to another room later at night and they were informed the next morning that the medical test was negative. According to her, two women officers — a Group Captain (the presiding officer for inquiry) and a Wing Commander — talked to her later that day and asked her to convey her decision in haste.
She called on the Commandant the next day and asked when the accused would leave the campus. If that was not possible, she wanted to leave the course. However, according to the FIR, the Commandant asked her to give her withdrawal of complaint in writing.
The survivor recalled in her complaint that an instructor of the rank of Wing Commander told her that if she could bear with the ankle pain, she could bear with the pain of seeing the rapist in class, too. She was also told by Air Force authorities that if she decided to file an FIR, the case could leak to the media and her name would be all over the news and in every air force station, said the FIR.
It said she then gathered courage and went to the Coimbatore City Police Commissioner’s office on the morning of September 20 and filed a complaint.
Published - September 30, 2021 01:00 am IST
