Ruchika molestation case: Supreme Court grants bail to former Haryana DGP Rathore

NEW DELHI - The Supreme Court on Thursday granted bail to former Haryana Director General of Police (DGP) SPS Rathore in the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case.

The apex court took the decision keeping into account the closure report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the fact that he had already spent six months in prison.

The Supreme Court has, however, asked Rathore to deposit his passport with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and not to leave the country.

Ruchika’s family recently filed two other cases against Rathore, accusing him of doctoring her post-mortem report, and of torturing her brother who was arrested after her death.

The CBI on Wednesday said it had found no facts to support the allegations made by Ruchika Girhotra’s family against SPS Rathore, who was serving 18-month jail sentence on charges of molesting the 14-year-old teenager in 1990.

The investigating agency filed a closure report in the Ambala court giving a point-by-point disproof to all the eight charges made by Ruchika’s father SC Girhotra and four allegations made by her brother Ashu, who claimed that he was taken home in a semi-nude condition and that false cases were slapped on him about auto-theft at Rathore’s behest.

SC Girhotra had alleged in his complaint to the police that after his daughter consumed poison on December 28, 1993, he was forced by Rathore, who was the then Inspector General (Telecom), to take her to Chandigarh’s PGI Hospital and during the postmortem, the magistrate was not called by the police.

In its report, the CBI claimed that the allegations could not be substantiated “as per the documentary evidence and oral testimony of witnesses”.The probe disclosed that Ruchika had consumed poison in the morning of December 28, 1993 at her home in Panchkula and that she was taken to PGI hospital by Girhotra and his second wife Veena of their own,” the investigating agency said in its closure report.

The CBI was investigating whether Rathore drove Ruchika to suicide after she filed molestation charges.

Ruchika, a budding tennis player, had committed suicide three years after being molested by Rathore on August 12, 1990. (ANI)