Panchkula (Haryana), Dec 30 - Sector 6 of Panchkula, an upscale suburban town outside Chandigarh, is not only known for its leafy streets, spacious houses and influential residents - but for infamous high-profile offenders as well.

The most notorious resident of the sector now is the disgraced former Haryana director general of police (DGP) S. P. S. Rathore - convicted last week by a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court for molesting teenaged budding tennis player Ruchika Girhotra here Aug 12, 1990.

The convicted former top cop lives in a bungalow (No. 469) of the sector. The house once boasted a clay tennis court behind it, built by encroaching on government land. Action by local authorities has led to the tennis court now being reduced to a badminton court.

The sector, which has only around 700 houses, has several high-profile people as residents - including ministers, politicians, a former army chief and vice-chief, top generals, senior bureaucrats, top police officials and leading businessmen.

Rathore, who headed the Haryana police between October 1999 and December 2000, was a powerful police officer who used his position to harass the young girl's family, who also lived in the same sector, for three years after the incident, forcing her to commit suicide by consuming poison Dec 28, 1993.

Ruchika's brother Ashu was slapped with 11 cases of car theft in early 1990s by the Haryana police, all at the behest of Rathore. He was arrested and tortured and released only after his sister died.

The conviction of Rathore came 19 years after the molestation incident as he was able to delay the case at every stage.

Before Rathore, another resident of the same sector was another former DGP, Ravi Kant Sharma, who was convicted by a court in Delhi March last year for the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar in January 1999.

Sharma, once a resident of bungalow number 19 in Sector 6, is serving a life term in Delhi's Tihar Jail. His conviction too came after nine long years.

The Haryana and central governments have now initiated the process to dismiss him from service as a police officer.

In another case in the same Sector 6, an additional chief architect, Vijay Mahajan, was convicted of raping a 19-year-old girl in a house here in 1997.

Mahajan was convicted by the trial court and sent to prison. However, he was later acquitted by the Punjab and Haryana high court in 2000. (IANS)