Mouli Sharma & Vishnu Khanawalia
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a conditional summons to the Superintendent of Police (SP), Bhiwani, over the department’s repeated failure to file the Action Taken Report (ATR) in the brutal acid attack and attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl, in Bhiwani, Haryana’s Ghuskani village.
The summons, issued on 7 November 2025, comes nearly three months after the Commission’s first directive and follows two formal reminders dated 10.09.2025 and 01.10.2025 ignored by the Bhiwani police. It is the clearest signal yet that the national rights watchdog has lost patience with what it describes as a “serious violation of human rights.”
The order, accessed by Maktoob, directs District Police Superintendent (SP) Sunil Kumar to personally appear before the NHRC at its Manav Adhikar Bhawan in New Delhi on 01 December, or send a duly authorised representative well-versed with the facts of the case, unless the full inquiry report is submitted by 26 November 2025.
The Commission’s decision marks an extraordinary escalation against a police force that has already been under scrutiny for allegedly shielding the accused and delaying action despite the presence of multiple eyewitnesses, prior complaints of violence, and a clear legal obligation to act under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023.
The brutal nature of crime
On 03 August, a 17-year-old was allegedly attacked with acid while she was sleeping by her father, Satyawan Dalaal. The accused unsuccessfully attempted to kill her twice, first by drowning her in the underground tank of their home, and then by strangulation.
“I woke up to fire all over my face and body. I ran to save my life, screaming,” she told Maktoob, describing the brutal assault.
She said she escaped to the courtyard, where her father grabbed her and shoved her into the tank. “I surfaced two or three times to try and save my life, but he would shove me back in,” she said. Two young men heard her screams and pulled her out.
“At the time, I was in so much pain, I couldn’t really tell what was going on. I knew two men had pulled me out, but then my father grabbed me off the floor and dragged me inside the house. None of the boys followed us inside, where my father tried to kill me again.”
“He covered my face with a pillow so I couldn’t scream. Then he wrapped a gamchha (thin Indian towel) around my neck and tried to kill me. When I struggled, he tried to smother my face with his hand, but I got free.”
Eyewitnesses told these reporters that acid had eaten away half her clothes and that they remained outside the house “out of respect for her modesty,” believing the father might be helping her change. Instead, she said, he tried to smother her again.
The NHRC’s conditional summons noted allegations that the father played loud music to muffle her screams. Monica and other eyewitnesses confirmed all allegations except the music.
Three reminders, zero accountability
The NHRC’s first notice was sent on 8th August 2025, less than a week after the assault. At the time, the Bench presided over by Member Shri Priyank Kanoongo took suo motu cognisance of the complaint filed by Sushil Verma, former member of the Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (HSCPCR).
Verma had accused the Bhiwani police of deliberate suppression of evidence and wilful neglect of duty.
“They are simply not interested in solving this case,” he said.
The Commission directed the SP to inquire into all allegations — including the attempt to drown the survivor, the manipulation of her official statement, and the alleged murder of her mother fourteen years ago — and to submit an ATR within two weeks.
The Bhiwani police, however, neither complied nor responded.
On 10 September, the NHRC issued its first reminder to the SP, restating the matter and its urgency. Less than a month later, on 01 October, it issued another.
On 07 November, with still no report received, the Commission invoked Section 13(4) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, granting it the powers of a civil court to summon officers and enforce compliance.
A pattern of evasion
The NHRC’s sharp tone follows weeks of contradictory statements from Bhiwani officials, revealing a pattern of evasion and blame-shifting across the district police hierarchy. Under Section 173 of the BNSS, police are mandated to immediately record and register an FIR upon receiving information of a cognisable offence, particularly in cases of acid attack or attempted murder. Any failure to do so is a punishable offence.
In addition, Section 256 of the BNS explicitly criminalises any omission “likely to save a person from punishment” from public record — a clause directly relevant to the deliberate removal of crucial facts from the survivor’s written statement.
Despite the existence of such unambiguous legislation, the ground reality of normalised ineffectivity in Indian policing and governance means that even with the attention of a national statutory body like the NHRC, police officials are given opportunities of defence —even where the law entails a penalty.
The NHRC’s initial demand for an ATR, through which the officials responsible could have “explained” the inaction that Indian law cognises to be an offence, was precisely such an opportunity—one the local police chose to ignore.
“I don’t really know much about the case,” said its investigating officer, SI Baljeet Singh, in charge of the Gujrani chowki back in August after the initial deadline of two weeks had passed without the formulation of an ATR as per NHRC’s orders. In fact, he has denied having any information about such a directive at all.
“We have no information of any orders from NHRC at the chowki, so there has been no report compiled. As for the case, arresting officer SI Mukesh at the Sadar police station should know more, as I haven’t really been active on it since 5th August. I’ve never even spoken to the accused,” he said.
Arresting officer SI Mukesh, on the other hand, said that things are exactly the other way around.
“I’m not really involved in the investigation,” she said. “I was merely sent to make the arrest as [Singh] was busy with some work at the time. This case is of the Gujrani chowki. I’m from the Sadar station, the chowki would know more.”
Both statements are also contradicted by the NHRC’s official correspondence, which explicitly names the SP, Bhiwani, Sunil Kumar, as the responsible authority for compliance and submission of the inquiry report, under whose jurisdiction the concerned station and chowki fall.
Verma also spoke to these reporters about a similar pattern of inconsistency within the accounts of the Bhiwani police regarding the investigation of Monica’s case.
“[Before I filed the complaint], an associate of mine spoke with the SP and IO at the time to confirm the status of the case, and the two couldn’t even agree on whether the victim’s statement had been taken,” Sushil Verma said.
‘They wouldn’t have registered the FIR without us’
According to Verma, the FIR in the case was registered only on 6th August, three days after the attack, and only after he reached out to the NHRC. Until then, officers at the Gujrani chowki had recorded statements without medical clearance, delayed the arrest on “procedural grounds,” and excluded key details — including the attempted drowning and strangulation — from the official record.
A copy of the FIR was accessed by these reporters, and confirms the allegations of delay in registry and exclusion of section 109 (attempt to murder) of the BNS from the FIR’s listed charges. Arresting officer SI Mukesh and IO Baljeet Singh also independently confirmed that Monica’s statement had to be recorded multiple times due to procedural complications, which in turn delayed the arrest of the accused.
“The first statement was recorded without the presence of a female Deputy Magistrate (DM) or approval of the doctor in charge, which is not correct procedure,” Mukesh said. “This is why we could not register an FIR that day, nor could we make an arrest.”
“They’re lying through their teeth,” alleges Verma regarding Singh’s denial of having received notification from the NHRC. “I know for a fact that SP Sunil Kumar is well aware of the NHRC’s orders, as I have a copy of the correspondence myself. As I said, they are uninterested in solving this case,” he says.
The girl confirms that the omissions from her statement in the FIR were made despite her having personally read and corrected her testimony when it was taken.
“I told them everything, ‘I was sleeping when he threw acid on me, then he tried to drown me. When people pulled me out, he took me inside and attempted to strangle me.’ I even checked that they wrote it all down,” she told Maktoob.
“Here in Haryana, law, its enforcement, justice… None of these things work quite like they’re supposed to,” said Sushil Verma, who himself had been part of the state machinery for over a decade. “There’s a culture here, of matters being closed out ‘internally’—a culture of compromise. Whether that be within the family, within the village, or within the four walls of the local chowki itself. I suspect if I hadn’t involved the NHRC, they wouldn’t even have registered an FIR,” he said.
Complete institutional collapse
The Commission’s intervention has also drawn attention to the wider systemic failure across Bhiwani’s and therein India’s protection and welfare mechanisms.
The district’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) — responsible for the care of minors whose natural guardians are in judicial custody or incompetent to perform their duties for any other reason — currently functions with only three of its five mandated members, all male, and has been without a chairperson for over a year.
When contacted in late August, CWC member Ramesh Kumar admitted that the committee had “not yet taken any action” in the matter, citing jurisdictional limitations under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
As of November, only one round of ‘counselling’ has been conducted, and neither the girl nor her younger brother has been contacted by the statutory body since.
“They came once. They just asked me the same things the police had asked and left,” she said.
Also, back in August, the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) had transferred ₹1 lakh to the survivor as interim relief, but did not assign a legal aid lawyer to represent the siblings until trial began — a process that may ordinarily take no more than three months. At the time of writing, more than a week past this three-month deadline, the trial is still over a week away, and the survivors have no lawyer in sight.
As a result, the two minors remain helpless to contest their circumstances or even understand their rights, let alone demand them through official processes. Even more shockingly, the two are compelled to continue to live under the supervision of the very family accused of shielding their abuser, despite officially being under state guardianship.
New Precedent?
The Bhiwani police’s inaction reflects a deeper cultural malaise — as Verma put it, a “culture of compromise” that runs through India’s social, administrative, and most concerningly, even its legal fabric.
The Commission’s summons may be viewed as a test case for accountability in Haryana’s policing system. The NHRC’s decision to invoke Section 13 in a case of domestic violence in a rural jurisdiction is a rare and significant escalation, and may signal a much-needed turning point in India’s human rights policy when it comes to police accountability.
If Kumar fails to comply by 26th November, the NHRC may initiate coercive proceedings under Section 13(4)—and set new precedent with the Commission’s willingness to treat administrative inaction as a human rights abuse in itself.
Ends.
Mouli Sharma is a scholar of religion at Jamia Millia Islamia and a freelance journalist from New Delhi. Her work has appeared in publications like GroundXero, The Observer Post, The Leaflet, Nivarana, The Polis Project, Article 14, Feminism in India, and been republished in SabrangIndia, NewsClick and Think Global Health.
Vishnu Khanawalia is an activist and a graduate of French Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has previously worked on research and logistics for various resistance movements such as the 2020 farmer’s protest, the 2024 MNREGA strike, and the recent indefinite hunger strike at JNU, addressing student concerns under NEP 2020.
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