Narendra Kumar, a young IPS officer, barely 45 days into his job, was crushed under the wheels of a tractor-trolley allegedly driven by a member of the alleged mining mafia when he tried to stop the vehicle carrying stones in Madhya Pradesh’s Morena district. The chief minister has ordered a judicial probe.
What’s got lost in the noise is how heavily the odds are stacked against an honest officer when it comes to a sector where corruption thrives on the power of the state to bend norms, be it in issuing licences and permits or looking the other way. There are reports, yet to be confirmed, that he had cracked down on some others as well. The probe into the Reddy brothers and their empire showed that alleged collusion between politicians, local administration and land revenue officers was more than just a conspiracy theory.