Written by: Aneesha Sareen
3 min readChandigarhDec 22, 2009 08:51 AM IST
First published on: Dec 22, 2009 at 08:51 AM IST
For the past 16 years,ever since teenaged Ruchika committed suicide,her father and brother preferred to avoid the public gaze surrounding the molestation case. Even after the verdict was out on Monday,they stayed away,refusing to come out of the shell.
Ruchikas father Subhash Chander Girhotra and brother Ashu were nowhere to be seen in the court although they had been in constant touch with complainant Anand Parkash,the father of Ruchikas best friend Aradhana,who fought the legal battle against the powerful former DGP S P S Rathore.
Ruchikas father,who stays in Sector 12 Panchkula,refused to come on record. He is satisfied with the verdict and had tears in his eyes when I told him that Rathore had been convicted. He has still not come to terms with the loss of his daughter, said Anand Parkash. Ruchikas mother had expired much before the incident.
Harassed is too small a word to describe what the family went through these 19 years. Initially geared up to fight the case,the father and brother backed out,terrified with the chain of events that struck them one after the other.
Ruchika was suspended from the Haryana Lawn Tennis Association,which was then headed by Rathore. In September 1990,her school expelled her without citing any reason. Her father sold their house at Panchkula and Ashu,who was also in his teens,had six cases of car theft slapped on him.
Ashu was arrested by the Crime Branch of Panchkula police in October 1993,allegedly at the behest of Rathore,and kept in illegal detention for a period of more than two months. He was allegedly forced to sign on blank papers,which were used by the police to show his confessions that he stole 11 cars. One day when he was still in illegal confinement,Ashu was allegedly taken to his house and beaten mercilessly. Rathore allegedly asked him to tell his sister that if she did not take back the complaint,her family will face the same action.
On December 28,1993,Ruchika consumed insecticide. She died the next day. She blamed herself for traumatising her family. The traumatised family left the state fearing more harassment. Ashu was acquitted by the court in all the cases later on.
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