Six years after the CBI dropped the abetment to suicide complaint against former state police chief S P S Rathore in the Ruchika molestation case, the Haryana Police today brought back the charge against the disgraced officer by registering a fresh FIR.
The FIR, the third against Rathore since last week, had been registered on the complaint of Ruchika’s brother Ashu, which he filed on December 31, Panchkula SP Maneesh Chaudhary told PTI.
Besides Rathore, four other police officers - then Ambala SP K P Singh, ASI Jai Narayan, SI Prem Dutt and ASI Sewa Singh - had been made co-accused in the FIR lodged at the Sector 5 police station here, the police said. The maximum punishment under Section 306 IPC (abetment to suicide) is 10 years imprisonment.
Rathore was recently handed down a lighter six months imprisonment by a CBI court in Chandigarh for having molested Ruchika Girhotra here on August 12, 1990.
The budding tennis player had attempted suicide at her Panchkula residence on December 28, 1993 and died the following day.
The earlier two FIRs against the top cop were registered on the complaints of Ruchika’s father Subhash Chander Girhotra and Ashu for various offences, including attempt to murder, torture and harassment and doctoring the post-mortem report. The SP said the local police had recommended that the third FIR also be entrusted to the seven-member Special Investigation Team(SIT) headed by IGP (Security) S S Kapoor probing the case.
The Panchkula SP, who is a member of the SIT, said that subsequently the SIT would recommend to the state government to hand over all the three cases to the CBI as had been demanded by the Girhotra family.