The district and sessions court in Panchkula, adjoining Chandigarh, turned down an interim bail plea by former Haryana director general of police S.P.S. Rathore on Wednesday, while the Haryana government formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the Ruchika Girhotra molestation case.

Rathore had filed for anticipatory bail following two fresh first information reports registered against him on Tuesday. The court fixed January 1 for the next hearing.

The FIRs were based on the complaints by Ruchika’s father S.C. Girhotra and her brother, Ashu, that Rathore, after molesting the teenaged Ruchika in 1990, had pressured the family to withdraw the charge by implicating Ashu in false cases and trying to kill him, till she committed suicide.

They also accused Rathore of manipulating the post mortem report that followed Ruchika’s death.

A Haryana official on condition of anonymity stated that since the SIT was headed by a senior police officer, “it will be hard to influence or manipulate the probe”.

The Home Ministry also showed interest in the case. Ruchika’s father and his lawyer Pankaj Bharadwaj met Home Minister P. Chidambaram in Delhi on Wednesday. Bharadwaj told mediapersons the discussion centred on the possibility of reopening the case, as Rathore had got away with a light sentence of six months.

In his bail plea, Rathore claimed he was being targeted due to media activism. His lawyer wife, Abha, said not only was petitioner Anand Prakash manipulating the media, but some mediapersons were also playing a partisan role.

 “We had sued them (the media) when they carried similar concocted stories 19 years ago. The cases are pending in different courts to this day,” she said.

All this while, Rathore chose to keep silent at the court on Wednesday, barring one barb for the media: “The day you satisfy me that you have constitutional powers to decide judicial matters, I will speak to you.