Gujarat IPS officers involved in fake encounter released to "weaken" the prosecution: State government insiders

Amit Shah

By Satyakam Mehta
Well-informed sources in the Gujarat government have told me that “all-out efforts are on” to ensure that cops involved in the fake encounter cases are released on bail one after another. The reason, said the sources, is that they could be “quite effective” in helping “influence” and “work through” the prosecution to ensure that the cases begin losing its importance and fall through. A senior official requesting anonymity, said, “No stone is being left unturned to see to it that the the cases become weak.” He added, if so far three officers have been free – with two of them having been given plum posts – days are not far off when “others may follow suit.”
“A senior bureaucrat in the chief minister's office is taking special interest in this”, this sources pointed out, adding, “There are clear political reasons behind this. National president of the BJP Amit Shah is one of the prime accused in the case, and is currently on bail. One has only to remember as to why the Supreme Court shifted the Sohrabuddin case out of Gujarat and, for quite some time, even debarred him from Gujarat.”
The last officer to be out of the jail on bail after four plus years was Vipul Agarwal. He was just another suspended Gujarat cadre Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who was reinstated. The Gujarat government has done it despite the fact that the suspended IPS official was involved in one of the 21 fake encounter cases in the state during the Narendra Modi regime (2001-14). “This has clearly left a battery of steadfast officers frustrated – after all, they refused to toe the political line and were shunted out for exposing the extra-judicial killings”, the sources complained.

Sohrabuddin with Kauserbi

Agarwal was was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on May 3, 2010, when he was a Superintendent of Police (SP) in Dahod district, for the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case. The case was later linked by the CBI with the killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauserbi. The whole case was later converted, during investigations by the CBI, into a triple murder case wherein the investigators named Amit Shah, who was minister of state for home under Modi, as an accused. Shah is out on bail and the trial is on, while the Bombay High Court has conceded his plea to exempt him from appearing in person in the court.
Agarwal was in Palanpur sub-jail for four years and five months and was granted bail by the Bombay High Court on October 10. In November third week, the Gujarat government revoked his suspension and reinducted him in the force. It is quite another thing that he is yet to appointed – this could be because the Gujarat government is seeking to find an “appropriate” post for him, the sources said. He is one of the dozen police officials who are either in jail or facing prosecution.
Suspended Superintendent of Police (SP) Abhay Chudasama, a key accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh-Tulsiram Prajapati encounter cases, is another instance. On being released on bail, he was given a plum job as SP (Vigilance) in the office of none other than the Director-General of State Police. “The Vigilance Squad at the D-G office enjoys overarching powers to conduct raids and make arrests without the usual jurisdictional limitations”, a senior official admitted.

Ishrat Jehan

Yet another reinstatement was that of suspended SP GL Singhal, chargesheeted by the CBI in the fake encounter of 19-year-old Mumbai girl Ishrat Jahan and her three friends. Among other things, Singhal reportedly confessed to recording the proceedings of a crucial meeting ahead of the encounter. He also recorded telephone conversations between him and his superiors as well as handed over a pen-drive to the CBI of this.
Singhal was named an accused in the fake encounter, and he later even sent in his resignation. All this was glossed over, his suspension was revoked, and he was reinstated at the State Arms Unit in state capital Gandhinagar.
Besides the reinstatements, sources said, that some police officials from Gujarat could be given prime duties at the Centre with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. Among them are Rakesh Asthana, an IPS officer of the 1984 batch, presently posted as police commissioner of Surat, and Joint Commissioner (Crime Branch) in Ahmedabad AK Sharma. “Asthana’s case has been cleared by the Union Home Ministry to take over as joint director in the CBI, while Sharma is being considered for another key position”, the source pointed out.
In sharp contrast, there are several cases of IPS officials, considered headstrong, such as Satish Verma and Rajnish Rai, who cracked the fake encounters. They are being punished. While it was Satish Verma’s first investigation that eventually led to the arrest of GL Singhal and other cops in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, it was Rajnish Rai who blew the lid off the Sohrabuddin episode.
Where are they now? In August, Verma was shunted out far away from Gujarat as the Chief Vigilance Officer of the North-Eastern Electricity and Power Corporation in Shillong, while Rai was sent to Jaduguda in Jharkhand as the Chief Vigilance Officer of Uranium Corporation of India.