A father8217;s plea

There is a cautionary tale in the Ruchika episode: Never tangle with a senior police officer, even if he molests your daughter, systematically harasses your son and destroys your family. Know your station in life and always remember that ordinary folk are really no match for those appointed to administer to law and order in this country. Today, Ruchika8217;s father, once a middle-class banker, is a broken man driven to seek the consolation of life in an ashram. He wants justice, but despite the outrageous fashion in which fate has dealt with him, is uncertain whether he will ever get it. He is right to be sceptical. Although the CBI has chargesheeted the police officer who had allegedly molested his daughter in 1990, the man in question continues to be Haryana8217;s director general of police under the benign eye of Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala.

Yet, here is a man charged with actions incompatible with law and order as it is commonly interpreted. He is alleged to have molested 14-year-old Ruchika in 1990. When the family lodged a complaint against the officer and the Haryana Law Department, in 1992, recommended that an FIR be lodged against him, the state police systematically harassed the family, with the girl8217;s younger brother having to face a series of FIRs filed against him in an arbitrary fashion. This systematic harassment had the cumulative effective of driving the young girl to suicide in 1993 after which the filing of FIRs against the brother also mysteriously ended. The police officer himself remained miraculously unscathed by the tragedies that visited this family. Miracles of this kind are not the result of divine intervention, presumably, but some old-fashioned patronage down below. When one of their kind finds himself in hot water, the police display great alacrity in closing ranks and politicians can always be trusted to look the otherway.

Incidentally, even as the Ruchika case resurfaced in Chandigarh, in Madhya Pradesh there were protests outside the chief minister8217;s residence over allegations of the district collector of Shivpuri and a sub-divisional police officer having allegedly raped a woman in judicial custody and then falsely implicating her in a criminal case. A similar pattern here of the law-and-order machinery, first committing a grievous wrong and then rushing to implicate the wronged person in a crime. It brings us back to that old chestnut: Who will police the police? As part of police reform, the National Human Rights Commission, while making submissions in the Prakash Singh vs Union of India and others, had recommended the constitution of a district police complaints authority and the setting up of a five-member Police Security and Integrity Commission, under the chairpersonship of the chief minister of the state, to ensure the integrity and social commitment of the force. But any system of this kind is only as good asthe people who comprise it. For instance, in the Haryana case, Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala has shown little anxiety to ensure that Ruchika8217;s tormentor is brought to book. The least he could have done was demand that the director general of his state8217;s police step down until his name is cleared in this sordid and tragic case.