A four-member team from the Visakhapatnam police commissionerate, including an inspector rank officer, left for Jodhpur in Rajasthan on Tuesday to take stock of the crisis that cropped up with the arrest of another four-member team from the commissionerate by the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Rajasthan.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Shemushi Bajpai will join the team on Wednesday.
The DCP along with the team will conduct an independent inquiry into the allegations and try to obtain bail for the officers if they had been sent to judicial remand by the court.
According to sources, it is still not clear whether the officers have been arrested and sent to judicial remand or are still kept under police custody.
The incident has sent shock waves among the police fraternity in AP and it appears that the A.P. Police have now been entangled in a legal battle with Rajasthan police. It is learnt that this is for the first time A.P. police personnel were arrested by the ACB of another State under bribery case.
The four-member team that had gone to Jodhpur to arrest and recover the gold in connection with a dacoity case, was arrested by the ACB of Rajasthan on the allegations of demanding and accepting a bribe from the accused persons for not arresting and removing their names from the case.
The police officers have been identified as Inspector of Crime Wing (North Division) R.V.R.K. Choudhari, SIs Sk Sharif (Parawada) and Gopal Rao (MR Peta) and constable of the One-Town Police Station S Hari Prasad.
According to Commissioner of Police T. Yoganand, “the facts are still not known and only after our investigating team lands there and takes stock of the situation, we can come to know of the developments.” However, sources in the police say as per a brief telephonic conversation that Mr. Choudhari had with a senior officer in Vizag, the team had arrested two persons in connection with the dacoity case and was negotiating release of the stolen booty from a jeweller when relatives of the key accused got them arrested with the help of the ACB.
