The State government has reportedly decided to pay ₹1.75 lakh to an eight-year-old Dalit girl as compensation for the “high-handedness” she suffered at the hands of a woman constable in Attingal on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in 2021.
By one account, the Home department would order the constable attached to the supposedly women-friendly Pink Police unit to settle the damages.
The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) had concluded that the officer had accused the minor of stealing her mobile phone with no evidence to show any misdemeanour on the child’s part.
The girl had accompanied her father, a rubber tapper, to the town to watch the movement of freight destined for the VSSC. Her father had parked the vehicle near a Pink Police patrol vehicle till the trucks passed.
Soon, the officer, who was standing by, accused the father and daughter of thieving her mobile phone kept on the vehicle’s dashboard. The officer frisked both and allegedly roughed up the child.
A passerby offered his phone to the officer and asked her to dial her phone number. The device started ringing, and the officer realised it had slid off the dashboard and rested on the car’s floorboard.
Soon, local people mobbed the officer and demanded an apology. The crowd’s ire forced the police to decamp from the spot. The girl’s family, backed by human rights lawyers, moved the High Court for compensation.
The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition raised the issue in the Assembly, accusing the government of brushing the police misconduct under the carpet.
The High Court held that the officer had wronged the girl. But, it ruled that the ₹50-lakh compensation claimed by the girl’s father was unreasonable and not commensurate with the police misconduct the minor endured.
The court ordered the government to compensate the child. But, let the administration decide the quantum of compensation. It also frowned upon the law enforcement’s contention that the officer did not intend to implicate, humiliate or intimidate the child.
It said the police should conduct a public inquiry, not an internal one, given that the public could call a closed-door investigation report a “whitewash”.
It observed that disparaging a person’s integrity with no proof of wrongdoing was a grave human rights violation that ran against the grain of the rule of law.
