NEW DELHI: All of India has been agog this past week with the sordid story of how a senior police official molested a young girl and then used his influence to manipulate the entire criminal justice system in his favour, thereby forcing the teenager to kill herself to end her family’s nightmare. But luck finally ran out for former top policeman SPS Rathore, when he was finally convicted of molesting a teenager, Ruchika Girhotra, 19 years after the incident occurred, back in 1990. The incident has provoked an outpouring of sympathy for the traumatised teenaged victim who was forced to kill herself, and demands for justice in her memory. The positive aspects of people’s power, finding expression through a very vocal fourth estate, has reinforced the vibrancy and power of India’s democratic traditions and forced the government and the justice delivery system in India to sit up and take notice. Popular outrage has not provoked demonstrations of vigilante justice, but has forced the government both in New Delhi and in Chandigarh (the capital of Haryana state where the incident occurred) to explore ways to undo the wrongs done to the Girhotra family. India’s Law Minister Veerappa Moily said the government was working on a tough law which would ensure that such cases, involving minor children, would have to be resolved within six months to one year. “This is a very serious matter and it will be a model case,” Moily said. For the Congress party-led UPA government, which claims to focus on and help alleviate the problems of the common man or “aam aadmi,” this could well be the case that sparks off much needed, serious changes in the justice delivery system, reform of which has been high on their agenda, but implementation yet to take off. India’s Home Minister P Chidambaram, whose ministry controls the elite Indian Police Service of which Rathore was a part, has urged states to ensure that the police register every complaint and investigate every case. Chidambaram is also consulting with lawyers to re-initiate criminal proceedings against Rathore. The case history in brief is that Ruchika, a schoolgirl of 14 with potential as a tennis player, was molested by Rathore, then Inspector General of Police in Haryana state bordering Delhi. When she complained to the police about what happened, Rathore used his very considerable influence in the state to have her thrown out of school and harassed her family, comprising of her father and brother, (her mother died when Ruchika was a child) until they were forced to flee from Haryana. Rathore had her brother picked up on false cases and had him beaten and paraded semi-naked until a traumatized Ruchika drank poison and killed herself on December 29, 1993. Rathore was finally, on December 22, convicted of molesting the young girl, given a six-month sentence in jail but almost immediately bailed out given the “mitigating circumstances” (of his “advanced age”, 67) and emerged smiling from the courthouse, thanking his lawyer-wife Abha. It is the arrogance of power, reflected in the smile, that may prove to be his nemesis. Representatives of the media, usually more maligned than otherwise, were present in the courthouse to witness this travesty of justice and screamed foul. As media networks, television and print, began to unearth details of the case, skeletons kept tumbling out of the Haryana police department’s cupboard, highlighting how, over 19 years Rathore, who went on to become the state’s top cop (Director General of Police) used political, executive and even judicial influence to ensure his victim did not get a chance. At every stage, the doors to justice and fairplay were denied to the minor victim. The incident and its persistent coverage on national media has provoked universal outrage across India, and demands for a complete revamp of the system which allowed a young life to be snuffed out while the perpetrators of those crimes and those in power got away. This is not the first time that media pressure has provoked popular outrage and caused the judiciary to revisit several high profile cases. In Priyadarshini Mattoo case, a 23-year-old law student was raped and murdered by a classmate who had stalked her for some years. The offender was the son of a senior police official. He was let off by the court despite the judge stating in open court that he was “sure” the culprit was guilty. A retrial saw Santosh Singh, the policeman’s son who had gone on to become a lawyer, convicted and sentenced to death. In every such case, the perpetrators of crime have been those in positions of authority or those with power and wealth. “What these cases have shown is that those in power cannot get away scot-free any more,” said senior lawyer Amarendra Sharan, who was lawyer for the government in the Priyadarshini Mattoo case.