By IANS
Akola (Maharashtra) : A senior police official who tops the list of government officers named by an alleged victim of a large-scale sex racket as her exploiters was in the news for wrong reasons at least twice in the recent past.
District Superintendent of Police Deepak Pandey first hit headlines about five years back when his wife, then an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) probationer at Dharni in Amravati district, approached the state women’s commission against him for torture.
The Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, serving at the time as ADC to then governor Mohammad Fazal, was placed under suspension for two years following the complaint that his wife filed when Pandey roughed her up in full public view in Dharni.
The despicable modes of torture reportedly mentioned in the complaint included branding her by lighted cigarettes.
State Women’s Commission member Yashomati Thakur told IANS that Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil nodded when she recalled the case while talking to him at Amravati Monday.
“I was the one to order the officer’s suspension at that time,” Thakur quoted Patil as saying.
Pandey and his wife are since legally separated pending decision of a divorce suit filed by the wife.
The IPS officer then got into news for handing down a patently wrongful and downright feudal punishment to a police constable – of standing in the scorching sun from morning to evening for two consecutive days.
The only “fault” of the constable, then on the verge of retirement, was that he stopped Pandey who was talking on cell-phone while driving a car – a traffic offence.
The constable, who failed to recognize the IPS officer as he was not in his police uniform, had, in fact, let him off with a salute when the latter revealed his identity.
Pandey was let off with a warning for the punishment he gave to the subordinate.
In the sex racket case now under a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe, Pandey called a press conference Sunday to refute the charges the victim levelled against him.
A few hours later the same day, he also got the girl to address the press in his chamber to withdraw the charges against him – an act being viewed as highly improper for a government officer.
When reporters told Patil at Amravati Monday that the girl had retracted her allegations against the officer, he said it would be probed whether she did it under duress.
And the girl did tell the press in Akola the next day that she had cleared Pandey’s name under pressure from him and that she was actually firm on what she had stated in her affidavit – published also in a Marathi newspaer.
“How will I be able to help you unless you clear my name?” the girl quoted Pandey as telling her.