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Vinitha proves a point
 Tamil
Nadu Police have been considered one of the best forces in India. But
several cases have proved that these highly-acclaimed people are very weak in
investigation. There have been several cases in which criminals have been
acquitted pointing out several lapses in the police investigation.
A recent ‘prostitution case’
would reveal how weak the investigation really is.
Vinitha,
a famous Tamil heroine, was arrested on a charge of prostitution. Her mother,
brother, a broker and a South Korean businessman were also arrested. Vinitha and
her family contested the case, saying it had been foisted on them.
The Chennai city magistrate,
while delivering the judgment recently, passed strictures on the policemen about
the way they had conducted the investigation.
Vinitha was a famous heroine,
having acted in more than 70 films with many leading heroes like Sarath
Kumar and Vijaykanth. But the
policemen had charged that she was involved in street prostitution and solicited
customers from inside a car.
Is it possible for a leading
heroine, who had charged several lakhs of rupees for acting in films, to sit in
a car on a street and seek customers
who are walking on the street, the judge asked the police.
Secondly, the policemen quoted
a witness, who claimed he was a customer, that he had spent time with the
heroine in a car, which was
parked on a street, and paid Rs 25,000. But the customer was a street hawker and
the judge wanted to know how he could pay such a huge amount for having sex with
a leading heroine.
 The
witness turned hostile in court and ultimately the magistrate released Vinitha,
her mother and brother and passed strictures on the policemen.
What actually happened was that
last year Chennai city police were involved in many questionable exercises. It
was at such a juncture that lovers who were chatting in Anna Nagar Park were
arrested and sent to prison.
In another instance, the
policemen had collected the phone numbers of several TV serial actresses and
invited them on the pretence of making a new serial. But instead they arrested
those who had come seeking assignments and remanded them in prison after
charging them with prostitution. The police even splashed their pictures on TV
and in the print media.
It was at this time of ‘police
raj’ that Vinitha had given a statement that she had received a phone call
that a new producer wanted to meet her about a new film and that when she went
to meet the ‘producer’ with her mother and brother, the police had booked
her under the prostitution case. She had told the policemen that if she had gone
there for prostitution, she would not have gone there with her mother and
brother. But all that fell on deaf ears.
A survey has revealed that 50
per cent of cases registered by policemen are actually cases foisted on innocent
people. But even though the policemen are clever enough to book false cases,
their ‘ability’ fails them when it comes to ‘investigation’. The many
blunders that they commit help in the acquittal of these innocent people.
Vinitha is one such recent example.
Let us hope and pray that the
policemen continue in their blundering ways so that many innocent people are
spared. Because the core of criminal law is that hundreds of criminals can go
unpunished but not even a single innocent should be punished.
Harvey
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