Midnight raid on African women: Court seeks final status report

New Delhi: A court here on Monday issued notice to an Investigating Officer of Delhi Police, probing the former Delhi minister Somnath Bharti`s purported raid on some African residents last year, to remain present "in person" with final status report after he failed to turn up today.

Metropolitan Magistrate Chetna Singh on January 29 had asked Delhi Police IO to file status report, while refusing to order lodging of a separate FIR on a plea by another African woman seeking registration of a case against unknown persons. However, it had asked Delhi Police that the Ugandan woman be made co-complainant in the first FIR lodged on January 19 as she was also "the victim" of the same incident. When the IO did not turn up today with the status report, court directed him to remain present "in person" on August 2. "An information was received that the IO is busy in some emergency duty... IO is directed to remain present before the court on the next date. Notice be issued to IO. "IO is also directed to file the final report on August 2, without any further delay," the court said. The FIR was lodged on court`s direction after a Ugandan woman had approached it on January 18, 2014 seeking to file a criminal case against unknown persons. Around five foreign women had recorded their statements before a magistrate in which they alleged that Bharti, the MLA from Malviya Nagar in south Delhi, had barged into their house along with his supporters on the intervening night of January 15-16, the court sources had said. In the earlier application filed before the court, the foreign national had alleged that she and the other women were subjected to a cavity search during their medical examination at AIIMS and the then minister and his people had asked them in public to give urine samples. Television footage on news channels had shown Bharti asking police officers to conduct the raid as he had received complaints of drugs and prostitution racket in that area. Later, the second African woman had approached the court seeking registration of a separate FIR alleging she was also molested by the group.