Retired DGP RB Sreekumar has filed a sixth affidavit before the Nanavati-Mehta Commission, this time listing out bureaucrats and police officers who were rewarded for toeing the official line or punished for defying it, during the Gujarat riots. Sreekumar has suggested that the three-month extension given to DGP SS Khandwawala last month was also a reward for successfully neutralising the investigations into the 2000 riot cases that were reopened by the SC. He said the riot victims were frustrated because the SIT had generally followed the direction, path and concept of the investigation by the Gujarat police, especially in the Gulbarg, Naroda Patia, Sardarpura and other major cases where “only a police inspector was arrested for abetting riot-related offences.” “Can a few police inspectors conceive, design, organise, mobilise, prepare and perpetrate widespread and prolonged violence against innocent minorities, with a view to ensure mobilisation of the majority community to achieve electoral dividends for chief minister Narendra Modi and his party,” he stated. Sreekumar stated that the state government ensured the support and collaboration of bureaucrats and police personnel by penalising those who defied anti-constitutional orders and rewarding those who collaborated in illegal activities. He alleged that the instruments of transfer, promotion placements and post-retirement assignments were used for achieving this. He gives a list of 32 IAS and IPS officers, including former chief secretaries Subbarao, PK Laheri, Sudhir Mankad and Manjula Subramaniam, and other bureaucrats who got post-retirement assignments as rewards. Among the IPS officers, he mentions names of PC Pande, GC Raiger, Rakesh Asthana, AK Sharma, OP Mathur and Khandwawala as those who were rewarded. Pande was appointed chairman of the police housing corporation post retirement, while Mathur was appointed vice-chancellor of Raksha university. Sreekumar alleges that Khandwawala “through intimidation of complainants and witnesses, ensured that the 2000 riot cases that were reopened, were neutralised.”
COPS REWARDED FOR TOEING GOVT LINE DURING GUJARAT RIOTS
Retired DGP RB Sreekumar has filed a sixth affidavit before the Nanavati-Mehta Commission, this time listing out bureaucrats and police officers who were rewarded for toeing the official line or punished for defying it, during the Gujarat riots.
