Sixteen years after a budding tennis player committed suicide after being molested and harassed by the former Director-General of Police S.P.S. Rathore, her friends and members of her family took out a march on Tuesday to the house where the teenager once lived.
The victim’s friend Aradhana, accompanied by her husband and her mother Madhu, lit an earthen lamp outside the house and observed a minute’s silence. The house, where repair work is under way, is unoccupied.
“Nineteen years have passed since the molestation incident and 16 years since her suicide,” Aradhana told reporters outside the house. “But I am still hopeful that justice will be done because now it has become a people’s fight. Her soul must be happy and she must have smiled.”
The victim’s father, who could not join the march due to his poor health, said the law and the police could not ever bring back what he had lost. But he would keep fighting so that no girl was molested and no powerful man would harass an innocent family.
“Had she been alive, she would have been 34 years old,” he said in a heavy voice. “I have seen my daughter commit suicide and my son faced with indescribable torture. I don’t know what justice can come to me now.”
The former Haryana Director-General of Police and investigating officer in the case, R.R. Singh, said he was willing to be a witness against Rathore in any court. “My sympathies are with the victim’s family. This case started on my report to the government of Haryana. I had given evidence in the court and will do so again. He [Rathore] must be charged under Sections 306 and 305 and the punishment should be harsh.”
In his report, submitted on September 3, 1990, Mr. Singh held Rathore prima facie guilty of molestation.
