Justice calling!!

Ruchika Girhotra case is off media these days.

A 14 year old girl gets molested and commits suicide after 3 years. Reason being, her family is tortured by the molestor to such an extent that the father and brother have to sell all their property, leave job and migrate to the outskirts of a nearby hill station and make living by filling earth...

Yeah, it sounds like a hindi film story, but this is what happened to Ruchika Girhotra some 19 years ago, and the culprit is not only moving free shamelessly; but despite of the case being escalated to the Home Ministry, no firm action has been taken as yet.

This case has left me pondering over many things...

We all know that we are not living in a corruption free country. There is red tapism, bureucracy, bribery all around us. People commit gruesome crimes and roam freely all their lives.

And this is also a similar story, nothing new. But i don't know, for some reason this particular case has left me astounded and scared and worried.

A 14 years old girl goes to tennis court everyday after school to practice. An Inspector General of Police who also happens to be the head of Haryana Lawn Tennis association, calls the girl to his office on one such practice day and molests her. The girl and her friend save themselves that day and run back home. They do not tell their parents out of sheer fear. The next day the IG calls them again. This time they refuse, and tell their parents, and a police compalint is lodged against the IG.

Thats the crime i guess the minor girl committed.

This incident changed the life of Girhotra family. What happened to the family and Ruchika after that can be read through the link above.

Today after 19 years since the incident happened, the case has been transferred to CBI once again...The CBI inquiry is on, and hopefully the family will get "justice".

I don't know what kind of justice would it be. For a family who has lost their daughter, spent a good 19 years of their lives in harrassment, uprooted from their own city, their job, struggling all these years to fight the Indian Judicial system...what justice can they be promised now??

This case has scared me, has made me feel even more insecure in these surroundings. A common man's life in this nation of ours is so very insignificant. The dirty nexus of powerful men at the top can screw whosoever they want to. Its like total gundaraj. It seems money and powerful is the mightiest of all. Common man can only fight and fight for justice...which if comes, would be after a lifetime of struggle and not sure if its severity would match that of the crime the victim has been subjected to!!

This particular incident happened to the educated middle class family, who are aware of their rights, of the law proceedings and can afford to fight a case for so long. The plight of other such incidents which happen to the poor in the remote areas of the country, can be well imagined.

Given the fact that the case has recieved immense limelight, and has reached the highs of Home Minister as well; one can expect positive result in the near future. But my question is: Would any kind of punishment, less than a death sentence, be close to enough to give some relief to the traumatised Girhotra family? Justice has already been denied to them for so long. Anything less than that, would be an insult to the whole case. In the name of justice, it would be nothing but justice denied in the true sense of the word.

Thanks to the media power and Aradhana Prakash, the other young girl who was with Ruchika on that dreadful day of Aug 11, 1990 who is fighting the battle for the past 19 years now. Hats off to a true friend and a responsible citizen.

This case reached the home ministry and now CBI is looking at it again. It would be major dissapointment if Rathore- the main culprit is given any punishment less than a death sentence for the gruesome series of crimes he has commited in this case.

[Abha Rathore - SPS Rathore's wife, who is a lawyer, is supporting her husband and is defending him in the court. Some day I want to do a research on the physcology of such "females" who defend their spouses in cases of molestation and rape]