By Jaideep Sarin, IANS,
Chandigarh: Haryana Police appear to be dithering over the arrest of its former head, S.P.S. Rathore, in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case. If he is arrested, the disgraced police officer will not be the first state police chief to go behind bars as a criminal. Two of his predecessors have also spent terms in prison.
Former Haryana director general of police (DGP) Lachhman Dass was the first state police chief to be arrested by the same force which he had headed. Dass, who was DGP from August 1994 to April 1995, was arrested soon after his retirement as he was accused of being involved in a conspiracy to kill a man called Jatinder Pehal in a staged gunfight in 1994.
Pehal’s mother, Ishwati Devi, had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court saying that her son was killed in a staged gunfight while in police custody. Dass, who spent several months in prison before getting out on bail, has written in his biodata on the Haryana police’s official website that his “fond memories” of police service included being “framed” in the case.
It was “a saga of torture and humiliation by a politician CM who wanted illegal actions which he (Dass) refused and suffered awfully and some police officers became tool against him”, Dass wrote on the official website.
Dass got a president’s gallantry medal in 1970 and a president’s police medal for distinguished services later. He now lives in Panchkula’s Sector 8 and is involved in social activities apart from running a petrol pump with his son. His case is pending before various courts.
Dass’s successor, DGP Ramesh Sehgal, who headed the state police between May 1995 and November 1995, was arrested in December 1996, just a year after heading the state police. Sehgal was arrested after he was allegedly caught taking a bribe from a Gurgaon businessman for releasing a prisoner on extended parole.
Sehgal, who retired in December 2000 and died a year later, had alleged that the corruption case against him was set up by jealous colleagues in the state police.
Senior police and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers had personally gone to catch Sehgal ‘red-handed’ and arrest him at his Sector 7 residence in Panchkula, adjoining Chandigarh.
His case ended after his death.
Earlier too, Sehgal was accused by a junior officer of corruption in a recruitment scam in the state police.
Out of the state’s 26 DGPs since it was created Nov 1, 1966, two have already been behind bars and the third one, Rathore, may be arrested in fresh cases registered against him in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case after his conviction last month by a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court in Chandigarh.
Ruchika, then a 15-year-old budding tennis player, was molested by Rathore, then an inspector general of police, in Panchkula Aug 12, 1990. She committed suicide three years later as Rathore allegedly hounded her and her family to drop the charges against him.
In neighbouring Punjab, the state police arrested S.S. Virk, who headed Punjab Police as DGP till January 2007, in September 2007 on the charge of possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
Virk, who was considered close to Congress leaders and had alleged that the Akali Dal government was framing him for political considerations, got bail and some relief from court later. He went on to become the DGP of Maharashtra, his Indian Police Service (IPS) home cadre, from where he retired in July last year.
(Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at [email protected])