The Proact Blog

Barkha Dutt

DGP Rathore, the convicted yet let off lightly molester

Ram Jethmalani, the crafty & artful dodger

Watch This: IS THE LAW TOO KIND ?

This video clip of Barkha Dutt's The Buck Stopped Here on NDTV is around 30 minutes. Let us watch this telecast, on Ruchika Girhotra's molester - the ex-DGP of Haryana Rathore and his getting away with a 'sentence' of six months imprisonment.

A short history : 14 yr old Ruchika was felt up by dear Rathore in the Lawn tennis office back in 1990. When she and her well-wishers made an official complaint, all hell broke loose. Official government machinery ensured the Girhotra family was hounded in multiple ways - thrown out of school (for not paying fees by due date); young brother charged with auto theft not once but six times/ beaten up (and each time acquitted and case thrown out for lack of evidence); goons calling up & threatening at all times - and finally destroyed: She committed suicide 3 years later.

Footage of Rathore's grinning visage and 'thanks to his lovely wife' apart (they will now forever after be comfortably ensconced in their well padded life of close cronies and money, away from the minor irritants of the outside world - such is the power of the shielding by our society), we watch the Chautala son pompously 'welcome' the court ruling, and then, wait - at the end, comes the coup de grace.

Ram Jethmalani smartly and smoothly and totally casually, insinuates that a) Ruchika's suicide cannot be linked to grinning molester leaving court with lovely wife b) He accuses Ruchika's brother, who was helplessly slapped with at least half a dozen cases of 'auto theft' when he was a minor nearly two decades ago, as maybe a proven defaulter and c) NDTV and the entire media as 'sensationalists' who are painting a non-entity of an issue as being important.

Barkha handles the sudden attack by this Ram Jethmalani with aplomb, but well - he has already smartly got his 2 minutes of spanner-in-the-works glory on National TV.
Who is to now attack him back with all the proof that is out there?? And of course, in all the hullaballoo, he has so chalu'ly put the ball in the court of the others as needing to 'prove' all his baseless charges wrong all over again (and believe you me, the proof is there, for every single charge. Just see today's Indian Express. 24th December 2009)

Audience is aghast. My fellow twitterers want to reach into the TV to smash his face in.

I wonder for a while if he is senile and then figure, this is no sign of senility.

This is sheer cunning and well thought out strategy. He has had a crafty long innings in this lifetime already finetuning his art.

But what I muse now, is the crafty long innings our society has had over centuries and millennia, perfecting this inequality.

Punjab and the North have the worse gender skew in the nation, and a male is seen as God's grace while a daughter is God's curse. Take a look at the soap operas on TV. Surfing across channels, I am sickened at the programs which via 'portraying societal stories', quietly and snidely perpetuate the status quo of 'helpless' women; karva chauth; widowhood, conniving women et al. The channels are all party to it.
Colors. Sahara One. Star Plus. NDTV Imagine. Sony. Zee.

How come there is no firebrand crusader 'Rajani' on TV in today's so called 'modern' times, nearly 30 years after Rajani was aired on Doordarshan ??

Child molesters are of course everywhere.

Perhaps, it is a sign of the evolving times that the media, the connected world we live in, is aiding to bring the spotlight on a few of these cases. Let us not delude ourselves. This is like a fraction of a fraction of cases all around us. Yet, it is a beginning. The malaise runs deeper. Child molestation is just one of the symptoms of the disease of inequality.

And when i wonder what this means about where we are headed, I am struck with a thought.
Ram Jethmalani kind of characters are necessary for us to be jolted out of our comfort zones. To realize what a tenuous world of 'right' and 'wrong' we live in. With such ex- 'law ministers' guarding us...

Let us not allow our children, the Ruchika Girhotras to get fed up of the system in the future. And give up by commiting suicide at age 17. While smooth talking smartasses like Ram Jethmalani mouth such complete horseshit through their looooonng (86 going strong) innings.

The very need of society to continuously bombard us with our powerlessness - in every format and through every avenue, is a sign of the fact that : You know what, The power is in our hands, ladies !
Why the hell should we be ashamed of the muck and dirt of dirty minds??? And who says I am talking of molesters alone??