Hyderabad: The police’s callous attitude in registering missing cases, particularly of teenage girls, causing agony to the victims’ parents, has come to the fore with the Priyanka Reddy case.
The main allegation against police is that they not only refuse to register cases, they also arbitrarily blame the victims’ so-called love affairs or elopement, which adds insult to injury to the anxious families.
The case of Dr P. Priyanka Reddy is an example of police apathy. When her mother approached the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport Police station (RGIA) at Shamshabad, she was told it was not in their jurisdiction and re-directed to the Shamshabad rural police station. The Shamshabad rural police also said that it was not in their jurisdiction and they had to go back to the RGIA police station where the case was finally taken up.
The parents say two hours of valuable time was wasted. Perhaps their daughter would have stayed alive had to police acted promptly.
After the 2012 Nirbhaya rape case in Delhi, the central government enacted a law that made a provision (Zero FIR) to register FIRs wherever the victims approach the police, even if the offence took place in another jurisdiction. The union government also directed all chief secretaries and principal home secretaries to explain the concept of ‘Zero FIR’. It basically means an FIR can be filed at any police station irrespective of the jurisdiction, and then later transferred to the appropriate police station.
Legal experts say that in Satvinder Kaur vs. State, the Supreme Court held that police may investigate a case not under their jurisdiction. After the Nirbhaya Act came into force, most states issued a circular to follow the ‘Zero FIR’ policy, but Telangana police appear to be ignorant of it. Or they deliberately did not follow it in Priyanka Reddy’s case. When this correspondent contacted senior officers, they refused to comment, but one senior police officer said that most policemen in the state were not aware of the ‘Zero FIR’ and they knew only ‘friendly policing’.
