Chandigarh, May 26: Former Haryana DGP SPS Rathore, whose sentence in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case was on Tuesday enhanced to 18 months, today moved the Sessions Court to seek bail.
In the bail plea filed in the court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Gurbir Singh, Rathore’s wife and senior lawyer Abha Rathore cited medical reasons as the basis for seeking bail for his client.
The court will hear the bail plea today itself.
Judge Singh had yesterday rejected Rathore’s appeal against his December 2009 conviction in a CBI special court in the August 1990 molestation of Ruchika in Panchkula, a Haryana town 15 km from here. The girl had committed suicide three years later.
The judge had also allowed the CBI and Ruchika’s family’s appeal seeking enhancement of term and hiked 68-year-old Rathore’s sentence from six to 18 months.
The disgraced former DGP was later arrested and taken to the Burail Jail here.
Rathore’s wife had yesterday pleaded with the judge that her husband had undergone a heart bypass surgery and should be given bail. But the judge ordered that Rathore be arrested and taken to Burail prison. He asked Rathore’s wife to give reports of his medical condition to the jail superintendent.
Rathore was later examined by a doctor in the jail. His wife reached the prison to meet him but was not given entry. She gave his medicines to the prison staff.
Rathore’s lawyers have also initiated the process of filing a review plea in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
This is the first time in two decades that Rathore has been formally arrested in the molestation case that millions followed across the country after the dead girl’s best friend took on the ex-cop in what at one time seemed an unequal David-versus-Goliath battle.
On Tuesday, however, Ruchika’s family and friends were jubilant.
“We are very happy. Justice has been done. But our fight to get him even more punishment for abetment to suicide will continue. We cannot bring Ruchika back but today her soul will rest in peace,” Ruchika’s father SC Girhotra said after the verdict.
“This shows that no one is above the law. Even a powerful person like him can be punished. Two years or one-and-a-half years does not matter,” he added.
–Agencies