A woman senior police officer in Kerala‘s capital Thiruvananthapuram will undergo a 15-day behavioural training for publicly humiliating a 38-year-old man and his eight-year-old daughter last week. C P Rejitha has been transferred out of the Pink Patrol Force in Attingal and posted to Kollam on the basis of a report filed by the Special Branch and local police regarding the incident on Friday evening, The New Indian Express reported. Thonnakkal-native Jayachandran and his daughter had arrived at Monnummukku to witness the movement of a huge trailer carrying equipment to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.

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Rejitha accused the father-daughter duo of stealing her mobile phone from a patrol vehicle. She claimed to have seen Jayachandran take the phone from the vehicle and pass it on to his daughter. The child burst into tears after the cop demanded that the father-daughter duo come to the police station for further questioning and physical examination.

A crowd which had assembled in the area raised hue and cry over Rejitha’s behaviour as the phone was recovered from seat cover of the patrol car after another woman cop made a call to the police officer’s number.

Thiruvananthapuram Range DIG Sanjay Kumar Gurudin said the police officer “should have made proper verification regarding the whereabouts of her missing phone before enquiring, thereby causing inconvenience to the person and creating a scene in public. WCPO Rejitha should have apologised regarding the inconvenience caused as a matter of courtesy, which was not done (sic).”

However, he added, that as per an inquiry, the woman senior civil police officer “reacted naturally” when she found her phone was missing.

Earlier this month, a traffic policeman was suspended for allegedly misbehaving with three women in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.

Cops in the state are being imparted “behavioural skills” online by experts amid a rise in instances of police misbehaviour with people, according to a Hindustan Times report.