No medal for molester DGP

NEW DELHI: Disgraced ex-DGP of Haryana S P S Rathore is almost certain to lose his police medal over bringing “the force into disrepute” by not only molesting teenager Ruchika Girhotra but also misusing his position to harass her family, which allegedly drove her to suicide.

“The item has been listed in the agenda of the meeting of the award committee on January 4. A decision will be taken (on stripping Rathore of his medal) and the recommendation forwarded to the President for action,” a senior MHA official told ET.

On whether the rules relating to police medal for meritorious service and President’s police medal for distinguished service would be revisited to make it mandatory for the medals to be forfeited in case of conviction of the recipient in a criminal case, the official said the rules were already in place, though there was scope to make them more unambiguous. “But the immediate agenda now is to revisit Rathore’s police medal in view of his conviction,” the official noted.

According to the existing rules, the police medal and President’s police medal are “liable to be forfeited when the holder is guilty of disloyalty, cowardice in action or such conduct as in the opinion of the President brings the force into disrepute.”

Rathore, a 1965-batch IPS officer who retired in 2002, was awarded the Police Medal for Meritorious Service on August 15, 1985.

Meanwhile, the Centre has already initiated the process of reducing the disgraced cop’s pension benefits. Apart from serving a show-cause notice in this regard, the MHA will also be writing to the UPSC seeking its views on the matter.

Not only this, the MHA is now also considering following up on Union home minister P Chidambaram’s proposal, made during an IB centenary endowment lecture last week, that all police complaints be converted into FIRs. The thinking behind converting each police complaint into an FIR is that even if the complaint is false, police will have to investigate it after registering the FIR.

The move comes following allegations from the family of Ruchika Girhotra that when they had tried to lodge a complaint against Rathore in the molestation case, the Haryana police initially refused to register an FIR.