By IANS,
Lucknow/New Delhi: A senior Uttar Pradesh police officer was caught on camera telling an aged man in Saharanpur that he should either kill his daughter, who had eloped, or commit suicide, prompting calls for his resignation from the National Commission for Women (NCW) for advocating honour killing.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Saharanpur Satish Kumar Mathur told a petitioner from Kaserwa Khurd, Shaukeen, that the matter of his daughter’s elopment was one of great shame. Had it been him, Mathur said, he would have either shot dead the daughter or killed himself.
Mathur was caught on video camera by local journalists who were at the spot to cover his inspection of a police station. The clip was soon broadcast on national television, triggering an outcry.
“I don’t have magical powers to recover your daughter,” Mathur is heard as telling Shaukeen, whose daughter had allegedly run away.
“But if your daughter has eloped then you should be ashamed of it and end your life. I would have killed my sister if she had eloped or else I would have committed suicide,” Mathur said.
The state government ordered a probe into the matter and asked the inspector general (IG) of Meerut to look into the matter and come back to the government with the facts.
NCW chairperson Mamta Sharma demanded that he be suspended immediately.
“The statement of the DIG is irresponsible and he must be suspended immediately. Is this what they are being taught in the police force. This is very disturbing. The DIG should be suspended without further ado,” Sharma told reporters in New Delhi.
The Congress also spoke out against him.
“It seems the person continues to live in the 19th century. If at all somebody has articulated such obscurantist sentiments, I think the state government should send them for retraining so that they can be speak in sync with the 21st century,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told a news channel.
Uttar Pradesh’s Additional Director General (ADG) Law & Order Jagmohan Yadav initially said Mathur had told him he’d been misquoted. Yadav then conceded that if the matter was what was shown on television, it was “serious and against social values”.