The Delhi high court on Monday directed the city police to speed up its investigation of Bois Locker Room — a social media group in which obscene messages and morphed pictures of underage girls were allegedly shared.The police have arrested an adult and a minor for allegedly morphing photographs and circulating obscene messages on an Instagram chat group. The members of the group are allegedly students of at least five prominent schools in the city.
A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh was on Monday hearing a plea seeking probe by an SIT or CBI. Judges said the cyber crime cell was already investigating the case; it disposed of the petition.
Now, Men Welfare Trust, a Men’s Rights NGO from Delhi has filed an official complaint under sections IPC and Juvenile Justice Act (JJA) sections against Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) Chairperson – Swati Maliwal – pertaining to her alleged illegal conduct in violation of said act amongst others. The complaint has been filed with various authorities demanding her immediate termination and initiation of criminal proceeding under sections u/s 197(4) of CrPC 1973 for offences committed by her u/s IPC 166, 167 & u/s 74 of JJ ACT by taking suomoto cognizance, entering into/initiating investigation, publicising, disclosing identity of accused or children allegedly in conflict with law, on social media platform without any authority & jurisdiction of a very sensitive case “Bois Locker Room”; where juvenile have been alleged to commit an offence, defined as “Child” under eighteen years of age as per existing law of The POCSO ACT, 2012 & JJ Act of 2015.
The complaint briefly reads as below:
Definition of Child and Laws to Protect Child Rights:
The Parliament of India has enacted one enactment under the name “THE PROTECTION OF CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL OFFENCES ACT, 2012” (herein referred as POCSO ACT) to protect children from sexual offences and also to ensure need of care and protection, right to privacy, healthy physical, emotional, intellectual and social development of the child who is victim of an offence under the ACT. We also humbly submit that Parliament HAS also enacted another enactment “THE JUVENILE JUSTICE (CARE AND PROTECTION OF CHILDREN) ACT, 2015” (referred as JJ ACT hereinafter) to safeguard rights of children hence to consolidate and amend the law for the child in conflict with law i.e. who is alleged or found to have committed an offence under Indian Laws and child in need of care and protection; by catering their basic needs through proper care, protection, development, treatment, social reintegration, by adopting child friendly approach in the adjudication and disposal of matters in the best interest of children through bodies and institutions established under the ACT.
Jurisdiction and Authority Of Delhi Women Commission:
State Legislature of Govt. of NCT has enacted Delhi Commission for Women Act 1994. We submit that as per Section 10(i)(a) of DCW ACT, the function and Jurisdiction of DCW is to investigate and examine – 3 – matters relating to the safeguards of rights provided for Women ONLY under constitution or any other women Laws. The Section reads: Function of the Commission: – (i) The Commission shall perform all or any of the following functions, namely (a) investigate and examine all matters relating to the safeguards provided for women under the constitution and other laws; Therefore, it is clear evident that DCW and Chairperson along with Commission members are only empowered to exercise Jurisdiction to examine and investigate the matters related to safeguard the Women Rights and NOT for matters pertaining to Child, whatsoever.
Cause of Action:
DCW, on 04 MAY 2020 issued one notice to Delhi Police of taking SUO-MOTO Cognizance hence entering investigation u/s 10(i)(a) of DCW ACT 1994 against the group called “Bois Locker Room” operational on social media platform “Instagram”, stating, that group members shared objectionable pictures of minor girls and planning illegal acts against minor girls and demanded F.I.R., Details of Accused, ATR from Delhi Police as part of their investigation. We submit that notice served to Delhi Police was signed by Chairperson Ms. Swati Maliwal and subsequently shared on social media platform twitter with a tag “BREAKING-“ by DCW official twitter handle @DCWDelhi on 04-May-2020 at 16:52 hrs IST. It was also retweeted by Ms. Swati Maliwal from her twitter handle the same day. We hereby submitting snippets of the tweet and the notice for your ready reference. The same day, DCW official twitter handle at 19:18 hrs IST shared video of DCW Chairperson and confirmed the notice issued to Delhi Police and Instagram against the boys in “Bois Locker Room” group for the same reasons. We submit that sharing objectionable pictures of child and sexual harassment upon a child are offences u/s 11 & 13 of POCSO ACT and Procedure for reporting and investigating authority for such offences is defined u/s 19 of POCSO ACT not under DCW ACT 1994. Hence DCW Chairperson committed an offence punishable u/s 166 of IPC 1860 and abused the position chair of DCW by taking SUO-MOTO action.
Ms. Swati Maliwal Not A Member of Juvenile Justice Board
Same tweet of DCW, dated 04-May-2020 on 16:52 hrs IST also discloses Notice issued to Instagram-Facebook seeking information of Name, Username, Email, IP address, location & any other information of accused children, during her ILLEGAL investigation initiated and again – 6 – Ms. Maliwal did not stop there. Dissatisfied with reply from Facebook, she, in capacity of Chairperson of DCW, issued another notice. Ms. Swati Maliwal herself knew and even then, disclosed that victims are children and also children in conflict of law connected to this “Bois Loker Room” case hence it is matter of child rights not women rights and there is substantive affirmative LAW for any child in conflict of law which means “a child who is alleged or found to have committed an offence (under IPC or POCSO ACT or IT ACT) and who has not completed eighteen years of age on the date of commission of such offence” u/s 2(13) of JJ ACT 2015.
The complaint also talks about the suicide of a minor in Gurugram on May 4, which was not directly linked to Bois Locker Room, however, an alleged consequence due to the media hype over BLR. The letter states,
We humbly submit it cannot be ignored that Suicide of a 17 year old child, XXX is the consequence of fear, panic and social media hysteria created by DCW Chairperson. We also submit that in year 2019 same habitual offender, Ms. Swati Maliwal, posted a video capturing sexual assault upon a minor, which was later deleted and she apologised for this act of hers. We submit that sharing such videos of child on social media is either an offence u/s 23 of POCSO ACT or u/s 67A of IT ACT 2000 and still no legal action has been taken against her, till today.
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The NGO has demanded immediate suspension of Maliwal and FIR to be lodged for intentionally abusing and mis-using her powers as DCW Chairperson.
We also spoke with JJA expert and Child rights activist, Dr Rakesh Kapur – Co-Founder – BambooTree (NGO) with regards to the matter and he quoted:
It is not difficult to imagine the life-long trauma and social ostracisation unleashed on children by public naming and shaming, wherein some of the participants may have been part of that group under peer pressure or FOMO. American Psychological Association (APA) in its press release (dt 08.10.2014) has categorically stated that emotional abuse of children leads to outcomes worse than physical or sexual abuse.Therefore, individuals like Ms. Swati Maliwal must introspect whether in their blind pursuit for political mileage, they have lost touch with humanity; while we as a society must remember that social or economic progress cannot be sustained on psychological corpses of our children!
WATCH VIDEO WHERE MALIWAL GAVE HER VERDICT EVEN BEFORE POLICE INVESTIGATION
The rape chats were never a part of Bois Locker Room and the handle was found to be impersonated by a girl to check the ‘character of the boy’ she was chatting with. Read Full Story Here.
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