Navy wife-swapping case: Set up a Special Investigation Team, SC tells Kerala Police
The court declined a petition by an accused officer's wife to begin a CBI probe in the case, saying the agency is called in only under special circumstances.
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Kerala Police to set up a Special Investigation Team to look into the case of wife-swapping among Indian Navy officers. The team will be headed by an officer of deputy inspector general rank and should complete the investigation in three months or so, the court added, according to The Indian Express.
The bench headed by Chief Justice of India TS Thakur was hearing a petition by the wife of an accused Navy officer, who had alleged that four other officers and one of their spouses was involved in wife-swapping. The woman had moved the court asking for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the case.
The court, however, observed that it gives directions for a CBI probe only in special circumstances, such as when there is lack of confidence in the team currently investigating. This was not the case here, the court found, after the Kerala Police said that 70 witnesses have been examined in the case already. It also refused to transfer her petitions from the local Kerala courts to the Delhi High Court. The woman had said she lacked support in Kerala and that the officers were influential there. However, the court said "mere apprehension" was not enough to transfer the case, but assigned her a senior counsel to bolster her petition.
The woman had lodged a physical and mental cruelty complaint in 2013 against her parents-in-law, husband and sister-in-law. She had made the wife-swapping allegation soon after and said it amounted to sexual harassment.