DGP SPS Rathore - Contd

Shame and shun men like Rathore

Swapan Dasgupta

Retired Director-General of Police SPS Rathore must be ruing the day he smirked his way out of court after being convicted of molesting the 14-year-old Ruchika Girhotra, way back in August 1990. Rathore’s satisfaction stemmed from the fact that he had received a token six-month sentence and been fined a laughable amount. Out on bail and pending a decision on his appeal, the retired police chief of Haryana was confident that he would use the all-too-familiar judicial delays to see out his natural life without punishment.

Rathore’s calculations were justified. But the outward show of smug arrogance, captured vividly on TV, did him in. Ordinary people throughout the country were disgusted and repelled by Rathore’s lack of remorse and contrition and the body language of swagger that comes from wielding power. We have all witnessed this swagger in officials who jump queues, the upholder of justice whose minions turf reserved passengers out of their berths on trains and policemen who think that the law exists for private gratification. This week we even had the spectacle of a Raj Bhavan being turned into a venue of some spirited sexual Olympics because a Governor deemed it so.

The only difference is that Rathore took the headiness of power to stupendous heights-molesting an innocent teenager, harassing her family to force a withdrawal of charges, encouraging his colleagues to brutalise her brother and finally driving the victim to suicide. Rathore ruined the lives of the Girhotra family because they had the gumption to protest against his moral waywardness.

Yet, the point to note is that Rathore succeeded because he had the blessings of an Establishment that is so infatuated with power that it lost the ability to distinguish wrong from right. The complaint against Rathore was initially made on August 16, 1990; a departmental inquiry completed on September 3, 1990, held that prima facie there seemed a basis for proceeding against him; yet the FIR was filed in 1999, and that too following a CBI inquiry. In the intervening nine years, Rathore rose to the top police job in Haryana. He even came close to getting a medal for exemplary conduct.

The rise and rise of Rathore happened not because the blot on his character was unknown but because both the political and bureaucratic elite equated the molestation of a 14-year-old with a bit of harmless fun on the side. The sheer incongruity of a child molester turning into the custodian of law and order did not strike the Haryana elite. And that is a social commentary.

Was Rathore turfed out of his club (or at least advised to stay away) because he was a groper? Did he receive any fewer dinner invitations during his service? The social and political elite of Chandigarh should seriously introspect on their own culpability in furthering the tyranny of a pervert. Rathore’s smirk was not the bravado of a beleaguered pensioner; it also reflected social sanction.

What is particularly galling is that even the religiously-inclined authorities of Ruchika’s school had no qualms about facilitating shameful intimidation of the Girhotra family. Those who took vows in the name of god had the girl expelled from school on a technicality. They knew exactly what they were doing and they stand indicted in a court that is far superior to a mere court of law. Maybe, just maybe, the incident should propel the Church authorities to ask whether their institutions serve god or a perverted Caesar. Indeed, it is strange that the question hasn’t been asked so far.

The Girhotra family has been ruined and no amount of belated retribution can help them recover what they have lost. For the country, however, the onrush of indignation may yet serve a function.

There are many Rathores in the system who will wilfully subvert all institutions to get their own way. The bureaucracy has thrown up its rotten apples and even the judiciary has managed its share of the non-kosher. Of politicians, there are few expectations and the real novelty lies in the occasional appearance of decency. As for the media, the ‘paid news’ controversy has indicated that influential sections of the Fourth Estate are plain racketeers.

What can be done to deter the mushrooming of Rathores in both the Government and civil society? To suggest that everyone must follow a moral course is desirable but it is widely known that the ability to compromise (the Indian term is ‘adjustment’) and even look the other way pays handsome returns — far more than the pitfalls of becoming a ‘whistle-blower’. It may be far more effective to combine institutional vigilance with social sanction.

In village India, where there exists a mismatch between the cumbersome procedures of law and perceptions of what constitutes justice, it is common to use social ostracism as an effective punishment. The jajmani system does not operate in a market-driven economy but there is still merit in depriving tyrants and deviants of their proverbial hookah-pani. If Rathore hadn’t been indulged and protected by his brother officers in both the police and the civil bureaucracy, justice may have come far earlier. The identity of these individuals is known and, in any case, will not take too much prying to unearth. The media will be doing a social service if it publicises these names — Om Prakash Chautala and Bhajan Lal are the easy targets — and waits for public disgust to take root.

Will those who helped Rathore and nurtured his career be able to look their daughters and grand-daughters in the eye? Will they not be haunted by the face of Ruchika? Will they continue to live with the fiction that they had nothing to do with her death?


The above is from Swapan Dasgupta, who writes in "the Pioneer"