Uttarakhand police have registered a case against two Kedarnath police officers for misbehaving with a woman pilgrim last year.

Both the accused officers — Kedarnath police station in-charge Manjul Rawat and sub-inspector Kuldip Singh — were suspended on Sunday.

“The case was filed against the two officers on the basis of a complaint by a woman from Indore last year. An inquiry was conducted recently. The duo have been suspended,” Vishakha Ashok Bhadane, superintendent of police (SP) of Rudraprayag, told reporters.

The woman from Indore had arrived at Kedarnath on May 25 last year along with her family and friends. They used the chopper service from Dehradun to Kedarnath and offered prayer at the temple.

On their way back, the woman had to stay back at Kedarnath alone as the chopper was full. She waited for the next chopper but it didn’t come because of a sudden change in weather. She approached Rawat with the help of her local contact as she had no place to stay at night in Rudraprayag.

In her complaint, the woman was quoted as saying: “Rawat asked me to stay in the police camp in Kedarnath. He said there would be a woman police constable on duty there at night but no one came. Later, Kuldip Singh reached there in an inebriated condition and started misbehaving with me. I called the police station in-charge but he didn’t pick up the phone.”

The woman somehow dodged Singh’s alleged advances and returned to Indore the next day. From there, she sent a complaint to the then Rudraprayag SP on WhatsApp. An inquiry was started but it stopped soon. The closure report stated that the complainant was contacted multiple times but she didn’t appear before the inquiry committee in Rudraprayag to record her statement.

The woman filed a fresh complaint on a grievance redress portal of the chief minister’s office in October last year and the inquiry resumed again under Dehradun SP Pramod Kumar.

“Kumar has found in his inquiry that whatever the woman said was correct and recommended harshest action against Singh for trying to take advantage of the vulnerability of the woman and Rawat for supporting him,” said a source in the police department.