Chandigarh: A special CBI court in Chandigarh has today directed thelower court to hear afresh an earlier appeal filed by family friend AnandPrakash in the Ruchika Girhotra case.
The special court has asked the CBI Magistrate in Panchkula, Chandigarh to givehim an opportunity, and then pass a fresh order.
Mr Prakash had in 2011 moved a special CBI court, challenging two closurereports related to Haryana's former top SPS Rathore tampering with Ruchika'spost-mortem reports and torturing her brother, Ashu Girhotra in police custody. The CBI closed the cases and said there was no evidence to prove that herbrother was arrested and tortured in custody on Mr Rathore's orders, or thatthe policeman had doctored her post-mortem results.
Ruchika's father had accepted that saying he was too tired to continue a legalbattle against Mr Rathore.
A CBI lower court in Chandigarh had already, in December 2009, found Mr Rathoreguilty and sentenced him to six months of rigorous imprisonment for molestingthe 14-year-old Ruchika on August 12, 1990. The Sessions court then increasedthe sentence to 18 months.
After she was molested in 1990, Ruchika was then expelled from school and herbrother was charged with theft. She committed suicide three years later,allegedly because Mr Rathore persecuted her family after she filed a policecomplaint against him.
In 1998, the CBI took over the molestation investigation against Mr Rathore.