Suspended TN top cop Rajesh Das third senior IPS officer to be convicted for sexual misconduct while in service

New Delhi: Former Special Director General of Tamil Nadu Police (Law and Order) Rajesh Das is perhaps the third senior IPS officer to be convicted for sexual misconduct while in service, after K P S Gill and S P S Rathore.

Das was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by a court in Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu on Friday for sexually harassing a woman superintendent of police in early 2021. He had since been placed under suspension.

Before Das, senior police officers S P S Rathore and K P S Gill were convicted for sexual harassment.

Rathore was convicted for molesting 14-year-old Ruchika Girhotra in 1990 when he was serving as the inspector general of police in Haryana.

Girhotra, a budding tennis player, committed suicide as her family and friends were systematically harassed and her brother was taken into illegal custody and tortured by the police.

The disgraced IPS officer was sentenced to six months in jail in 2009. The sentence was further enhanced to 18 months at the plea of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which investigated the case.

In November 2010, the Supreme Court granted bail to Rathore on the condition that he would remain in Chandigarh.

The Supreme Court later upheld Rathore's conviction in the molestation case but reduced the punishment to six months' jail already served by him considering his age.

Gill, a former chief of the Punjab Police, was convicted for outraging the modesty of a woman IAS officer but was spared from going to prison with the Punjab and Haryana High Court revising his three-month jail term to "probation".

The Supreme Court in 2005 upheld the order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court convicting him.

The fabled police officer, credited with stamping out terrorism from Punjab, was convicted by a local court in Chandigarh for outraging the modesty of a woman on January 6, 1996.

It was alleged that Gill, in an inebriated condition, had patted IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj in the back at a party hosted by a senior bureaucrat at his residence on July 18, 1988.

Another IPS officer, P S Natarajan, was dismissed from service in 2012 following charges of sexual exploitation, but he was acquitted by a court in Jharkhand in 2017 due to a lack of satisfactory evidence.

Sentencing Das to three-year imprisonment, the court of the chief judicial magistrate granted him bail and 30 days time to go for appeal.

The Madras High Court, while hearing a review plea by D Kanan, an SP-rank officer charged along with Das, had observed in 2021 that "if a woman IPS officer can be subjected to sexual harassment, less needs to be said about women police personnel in lesser ranks."

Kannan had filed a revision application to discharge him from the case as he was following his superior's orders.

He had been accused of blocking the woman IPS officer from filing a complaint against Das. He had argued that the charges against him should be dropped because he was only following instructions of Das.

However, the Madras High Court came down heavily on him and asked whether he would "commit murder if his senior asks him to."

The High Court further said, "It's a shame that women in police department are not treated with the dignity they deserve. Most of these victims do not come out and complain. Only a few of them gather the courage to speak out. When a senior police officer faces such an allegation, how will the common man have faith in the police department? God save the department."