While ex-DGP S.P.S. Rathore cools his heels in jail, another former top Haryana police officer has been booked for molesting a young woman who sought his help in a dowry harassment case.
Mr M.S. Ahlawat, who retired as an IGP, is alleged to have sexually assaulted Ms Arvinder Kaur when she visited his Yamunanagar office in 2002. Then posted as district police chief, he is said to have summoned Ms Kaur to investigate charges she levelled against her husband and in-laws.
Ms Kaur, a lawyer, had to bear long years of official apathy, harassment and torment before the Haryana police agreed to register an FIR based on her 2002 complaint. Besides numerous written complaints to almost every level of the police hierarchy, she was also turned away by senior politicians and bureaucrats.
Ms Kaur’s alleged assault occurred at a time when Mr S.P.S. Rathore was Haryana’s DGP and also facing similar charges for molesting Chandigarh schoolgirl Ruchika Girhotra. “If Rathore was not in office then, Ahlawat would not have dared to do such a thing. Ahlawat would not have had the guts to harass a lady who had n Turn to Page 2
gone to him for help in a dowry case,” Ms Kaur claimed.
It was only after she sat on dharna outside the Haryana police headquarters in Panchkula last year that the current DGP, Mr Ranjeev Dalal, ordered a ADGP-level officer to reexamine her complaint and book the now-retired IGP if necessary.
Following the fresh inquiry, the police has set up a special investigation team to probe charges now formally documented in an FIR at Yamunanagar’s City Police Station. Mr Ahlawat is to be investigated for offences under various Indian Penal Code sections, including sexual assault and criminal intimidation.
Ms Kaur, who remains as determined as ever, believes that it was Mr Rathore’s arrest and imprisonment in the Ruchika Girhotra case that galvanised the Haryana police into belated action in her case. “Otherwise I may have also been doomed to go Ruchika’s way,” she told reporters here.