Muktsar molestation case: CCTV footage contradicts complainant’s version

Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Muktsar, May 16

The Muktsar molestation case took a new turn with the victims’ father and the bus owner and the police giving different statements.

While the complaint says two girls and a differently abled man got off from the bus on Wednesday afternoon, the bus owner claims none of them travelled in the bus and the police, after going through CCTV footage, claimed a girl and her father had alighted from the bus at the Kotkapura bypass.

Victims’ father, who filed the complaint, said: “My daughters had gone to Muktsar to get enrolled for Aadhaar cards on Wednesday. On their return journey to Kotli Sanghar village, the bus conductor first passed some casteist remarks and then molested them. When my daughters objected, he forced them to get off the bus. A differently abled boy from a neighbouring village also alighted from the bus. We even have two tickets of the bus.”

Bus owner and SAD leader Hardeep Singh Dimpy Dhillon claimed: “The girls did not even travel in the bus. They have alleged that the conductor molested them in the moving bus in the presence of their father which is absurd. It is a plan to defame me and pressure me to withdraw case against some students who vandalised my bus in Faridkot.”

Kuldeep Chahal, SSP, Muktsar, who has examined the CCTV footage of a camera installed at the Kotkapura bypass, claimed: “We found that only a girl and her father got off the bus at 12.24 pm on Wednesday.”

We have sought the CCTV footage of a camera installed at the Suwidha Centre in Muktsar where the girls had gone. It will also help us in validating the complaint.”

The SSP said the driver and the conductor too belonged to the SC community, so the case under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act could not be registered.

A case under Sections 354 and 506 of the IPC had been registered against the unnamed conductor at Sadar Muktsar police station, he said. The complainant alleged the incident took place around 2 pm, but the police claimed that the girl got off from the bus at 12.24 pm.

Courtesy: The Tribune