Long-drawn battle:(Top) Rupan Deol Bajaj and K.P.S. Gill

New Delhi/Chandigarh, July 27: Rupan Deol Bajaj will not have the satisfaction of seeing K.P.S. Gill go to jail. But she is relieved that the country’s highest court has upheld the conviction of the former Punjab police chief who “outraged her modesty” 17 years ago.

The Supreme Court today dismissed Gill’s appeal against a high court order that held him guilty of slapping the IAS officer’s “posterior” at a 1988 “sundowner party”, though it rejected her plea for a jail term.

The judgment, by a division bench of Justices K.G. Balakrishnan and B.N. Srikrishna, brought the curtains down on a case that for the first time in the country highlighted harassment in high places.

For Bajaj, it has been a long wait, but she is “happy”.

“It was shocking. Here I was an IAS officer and my modesty was being outraged with nobody even batting an eyelid,” Bajaj, now Punjab financial commissioner (revenue), said after the verdict.

“It has been a long, long, wait of 18 years. I am happy that the Supreme Court has upheld his conviction which was earlier pronounced by the trial court and upheld by the sessions and the high court.”

The IAS officer said the verdict would help other women who find themselves in similar positions. “If I as a victim did not drag him to court, who else could have? And can you believe I was a commissioner then, a secretary to the government, and he was just the head of a department, a junior. And he had the temerity to sexually assault me,” she said.

For a change, neither party chose to go public with their reactions. While Gill’s supporters saw the case as a test of national respect for his role in checking terrorism in Punjab, the IAS officer’s advocates said it was a key struggle against sexual harassment.

The infamous slap on the bottom came at a dinner that S.L. Kapur, then financial commissioner, home, hosted at his official residence in Chandigarh on July 18, 1988. Bajaj lodged a complaint with Chandigarh police, which registered a first information report under Indian Penal Code sections that deal with offences of outraging a woman’s modesty.

The local chief judicial magistrate, who conducted the trial in the auditorium of Chandigarh traffic police because of the high-profile nature of the case, held Gill guilty and sentenced him to jail for three months.

The magistrate’s judgment relied largely on the IAS officer’s testimony as witnesses on either side were unwilling to provide an accurate account of what happened at the party. But Bajaj argued that a respectable lady with no malice against Gill would not lie.

Gill, credited with wiping out militancy from Punjab, appealed in the court of the district and sessions judge where the order of the chief judicial magistrate was modified. The sessions judge ordered Gill’s release on probation for three years.

When the case reached Punjab and Haryana High Court, it quashed the FIR against Gill. But the Supreme Court, on October 12, 1995, ordered Gill’s prosecution.

Directing Gill to face trial, the apex court said the “essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex and from her very birth she possesses the modesty which is the attribute of her sex”.

On August 20, 1998, the high court upheld Gill’s conviction under sections 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult a lady) and allowed him to be on parole. But the court warned the former top cop, now president of the Indian Hockey Federation, that he could be jailed if he did not maintain “good conduct”.

The high court also upheld the sessions court’s order directing Gill to pay Rs 2 lakh as compensation to Bajaj.

Gill had deposited the amount in the high court registry but Bajaj refused to accept it. She said the money should go to an organisation working for the uplift of women.

The apex court today asked the chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court to take an appropriate decision on disposal of the money to a women’s organisation.