A 22-year-old girl in Dhanbad has accused a police officer of indecent behaviour and threatening her of assault over the phone when she had gone to file a complaint against a private courier company for withholding the salary of his younger brother.

Shilpi Kumari, who is doing her final year of graduation from Shree Shree Lakshmi Narayan Trust Mahila Mahavidyalaya in Dhanbad, had gone to Jharia police station on January 10 to lodge the complaint against the company. However, since it was late in the evening, she was asked by an officer to come the next day (January 11) morning.

Shilpi said she came to the police station on January 11 but was late by two hours after which she was kept on waiting for the police officer for half an hour to lodge a complaint.

When she called up the police station officer Sanjay Sharma on mobile, the officer started hurling abuses and threatened to thrash her for turning up late at the police station.

“My younger brother used to work in a private courier company as a delivery boy but because of some issues the private company did not give him a salary and when we had gone to lodge our grievances, we were made to wait and were kept under CCTV surveillance and mistreated. We then decided to bring this to the notice of the police,” said Shilpi, a resident of Kenduadih.

She said that since the company is in Jharia, they decided to approach the police station of the area.

“We decided to lodge complaint in Jharia as the company fell under that police station jurisdiction and hoped to get early action against the company officials. The Jharia thana is nearly 7km from our residence (Kenduadih). We had to take an autorickshaw and reached the thana late by two hours,” said Shilpi.

After waiting for over half an hour and being denied permission to complain without the approval of the officer, she decided to call up officer Sharma, a sub-inspector herself.

“At this, he started abusing me and threatened to beat me for turning up late at the thana,” she said.

After that, the brother-sister duo turned up at Dhanbad senior superintendent of police Sanjeev Kumar office on January 12 and submitted a complaint against the concerned police officer.
Dhanbad deputy superintendent of police, headquarter-I, Amar Pandey, admitted of receiving the complaint.

“The senior superintendent of police has directed sub-divisional police officer Sindri Abhishek Kumar to investigate the matter and if the concerned police officer is found guilty, departmental action would be taken against him,” Pandey assured.

An audio of the telephonic conversation between Shilpi and Sharma has also been widely circulated in Dhanbad.