Mumbai: Mother-daughter get 6-month jail for scuffling with police

A sessions court has sentenced a mother-daughter duo to six months imprisonment for abusing and assaulting a police station-in-charge and two women police personnel who had intervened when the women entered the Kherwadi police station in 2012 and had started assaulting their relative who had come to lodge a complaint against them.

The court said in its judgment that nowadays, it is frequently noticed that even after public servants give their best to society while discharging their duties, cases of assault on them are on the rise. Ad-hoc Assistant Sessions Judge AH Kashikar said that the public is picking up arguments with public servants. There must be a rule of law, the court said. “To my mind, infliction of simple imprisonment can be justified punishment for the accused persons to deter them from repeating such an offence and to give a message to society that they cannot take law into their own hands,” Judge Kashikar said.

The court noted that the accused women Ruksana Nandgaonkar, 43 and Dilsama Fular, 26, were very aggressive at the time of the incident and had lost their temper. Their uttering of threatening words in the circumstances cannot be taken casually, it said. The women had threatened the police that they would get them removed from the job.

Five police persons had deposed during the trial. Of them, one was the station in charge who lodged the FIR and two were the women police – one a constable and another a sub-inspector who had been assaulted. Two police persons from Kherwadi police station who had witnessed the incident had also testified. Among the eye-witnesses was a senior video journalist from a TV channel who had been present at the police station to lodge a report and had witnessed the scene.

The informant Vasant Waydande had deposed that when he had intervened, the women had caught the collar of his uniform, throttled his neck, causing nail injuries. The woman had also pulled the hair of the woman constable and pushed her to the floor, he had told the court.