NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ordered the Government of Uttar Pradesh to pay a compensation of Rs 10,000 each to a girl and her Sikh husband and Rs 5,000 each to the relatives of the latter for illegally detaining the couple and humiliating them last year.
Justices S. Mohan and S.B. Majmudar have further ordered that it will be open to the State to recover personally the amount of compensation from the three concerned UP Police officers who had pressurized the girl, Nidhi, to implicate her husband. Arvinder Singh Bagga, and his family in a case of abduction and forcible marriage thereafter.
The Apex Court, brushing aside the police defense that their action had been taken to avert a tense communal situation, concurred with the District Judge that the detention of a married woman in custody on the pretext that she was a victim of rape and abduction constituted mental torture to her and the others illegally detained.
The two Apex Court judges said the District Judge, Bareilly, in his report had accepted Nidhi’s complaint that Station House Officer Upadhyay, Senior SubInspector Narendrapal Singh had during July 2426 threatened the couple with physical violence unless the girl charged her husband and her in laws with abducting her. When she refused to do so, the policemen brought her family members to pressurize her.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 28, 1994
