Panchkula: Haryana police are understood to have quizzed Veena who, Girhotras claim, was their domestic help even as father of Ruchika's friend Aradhana, the sole witness to the molestation of the teenager, on Sunday accused the cops of trying to save the former DGP SPS Rathore in the case.
Veena is the woman whom the Girhotras claim to have been their domestic help in the 1990s and Rathore's lawyer wife Abha Rathore has accused of being the second wife of Ruchika's father S C Girhotra.
"We have quizzed and examined all the important witnesses in connection with the case. There have been several allegations that have been leveled and we have to get to the bottom of the turth," head of Haryana police's seven-member Special Investigation Team, S S Kapoor said on Sunday.
The SIT was set up on December 30 in connection with the two fresh cases registered on the basis of complaints of molestation victim Ruchika Girhotra's father and brother Ashu against Rathore and others in connection with the incident.
Asked if Veena had also been questioned, Kapoor without divulging the names of those questioned, said, "All the important witnesses in connection with the case have been examined."
He also claimed that Girhotra and Ashu had so far not joined investigations despite repeated requests and notices sent to them by the SIT.
However, Anand Prakash, father of Aradhana, the sole eyewitness in the molestation case, alleged that the Haryana police had not shown any "seriousness to arrest Rathore and was instead trying to save him."
Prakash and the Girhotras' lawyer Pankaj Bhardwaj claimed that Haryana Police had shown no inclination to arrest Rathore despite his bail pleas being rejected.
"On the one hand Haryana police are maintaining that the probe (in connection with the FIRs) will be taken over by the CBI. Yet they are making swift actions in arresting people like Gajender without bothering to put Rathore behind the bars who has been denied bail. They cannot blow hot and cold in the same breath," Bhardwaj said.
On SIT's allegation that the Girhotras were not joining the investigations, Anand Prakash said, "I have asked them not to present themselves before the SIT. We fear that the father and son may be asked to put their signatures on some blank papers in an attempt to help Rathore".
"I am ready to cooperate, why don't they call me. But so far the SIT has never asked me to join the investigations," Prakash said.
"Now all of a sudden they claim to have managed in tracing down Veena and carry out the arrest of Gajender Singh, a proclaimed offender for 16 years," Prakash said.
Gajender, an accused along with Ruchika's brother in several old auto theft cases, was nabbed on Sunday from near Pune by a Haryana police team with active cooperation of Bihar and Maharashtra police, SIT head Kapoor said.
A Court in Pune has granted seven days' transit remand to enable the SIT to produce Gajender in a Court at Panchkula, Kapoor said.
Ashu had recently told Panchkula police that he was falsely implicated in the auto theft cases at Rathore's behest in order to pressurise Ruchika to withdraw her complaint of
molestation against the former top cop.
Kapoor said a CBI team was likely to reach Chandigarh on Tuesday and they would later hand over the investigations in the fresh FIRs against Rathore and others to them as the premier investigating agency had already agreed to that on the
State Government's request.
"We will get out of the picture once the investigations are taken over by the CBI. However, we will continue to cooperate with them and offer them any assitance which they may require during the course of investigations," he said.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Abha Rathore had told a Panchkula court that the authorities had not investigated the existence of a woman named Veena who, she claimed, was the second wife of Girhotra.
"This aspect of the Ruchika case was also not probed by the CBI," she had said, claiming that Girhotra had married this woman in 1991 after the death of his first wife.
She had also disputed the claims made by Ruchika's and Aradhana's families that Veena was just a maid servant with the Girhotras.
A Panchkula Court on Friday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of Rathore and another police official named in the two fresh FIRs registered against them and others in the wake of the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case.
Sixty-seven-year-old Rathore and ASI Sewa Singh had moved the applications seeking anticipatory bail following the registration of the two FIRs on December 29.
Ruchika's father Subhash Chander Girhotra and his son Ashu had filed two complaints against Rathore and others in connection with the post mortem proceedings and booking of Ashu in alleged false cases demanding registration of fresh FIRs.
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