Delhi police get a 'slap' from home ministry

New Delhi, April 23: The Delhi police is facing flak from both the Delhi

and the Union home ministry. While, Delhi's Women and Child Welfare Minister Kiran Walia demanded resignation of Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, a one-man inquiry committee of the home ministryhas indicated lapses in the chain of command of Delhi Police in handling three recent incidents, including the rape of a 5-year-old girl.

Kiran Walia wants the commissioner to quit as he has totally failed to contain violence against women. "The Police Commissioner must resign. The situation has gone out of control. People are fed up with him," she said. This was in response to defiant stand taken by the commissioner.

Neeraj Kumar refused to quit yesterday and promised exemplary action against policemen found lax in handling the case. "If my resigning will prevent such depraved action of the society, then I am ready to resign a thousand times. But that is not going to address the problem," the Delhi Police chief had said at a press conference.

And the home ministry probe talks precisely of lapses and lax attitude of the police. The probe, conducted by Additional Secretary in the Home Ministry Khurshid Ahmed Ganai found that there was a delay of a few hours in registering the case of rape of a child after the parents complained to the police on April 15 when she had gone missing. The child was rescued 40 hours later from the ground floor of the same building where she was living.

He has suggested changes in the Delhi Police hierarchy and measures to make the force more pro-active. Union home ministry is the controlling authority of the Delhi Police.

Last year, the Police Commissioner had come under severe scrutiny and demands were made for his removal following gang-rape of a girl in a moving bus. Even Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had demanded Kumar's resignation in the wake of the gang-rape.

Meanwhile, the inquiry of the MHA also covered the alleged assault on West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra two weeks ago in the national capital when he was accompanying Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on a visit to the Planning Commission and the storming of Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde's residence by Jat protesters on April 10.

The report of Ganai says that there was no liasoning between the Delhi Police and the entourage of the West Bengal Chief Minister before her visit to the plan panels office.

With PTI inputs

OneIndia News