Two women IPS officers, one of them summoned by a Ghaziabad court in an alleged fake encounter case, have been removed from government service for being on “unauthorised leave” for a long period.
Jyoti S. Belur, a 1993-batch officer of the Uttarakhand cadre, and Maria Lou Fernandes, a 1991-batch officer of the Maharashtra cadre, have been removed from government services and their “unauthorised absence” deemed as resigned.
Second instance
The Home Ministry’s decision comes weeks after two senior IPS officers — Mayank Sheel Chohan, a 1998-batch UT cadre officer, and Raj Kumar Dewangan, a 1992-batch Chhattisgarh cadre officer — were sacked by the government after they were found “not fit” to continue in the service due to their “non-performance”.
Ms. Belur, 48, has been absent since 2001 after she was shifted to the Uttarakhand cadre in 2000 following the carving of the new state from Uttar Pradesh. She is currently believed to be based in the U.K. while Ms. Fernandes had, in her reply, said she was pursuing a Ph.D in the U.S.
Fails to appear in court
Ms. Belur’s name figured in an alleged fake encounter case which took place in Ghaziabad in 1996 in which four persons were killed. A bullet recovered from one of the bodies was found to be fired from the official revolver of Ms. Belur, who was then serving as the Circle Officer of Modi Nagar.
However, it is not yet clear whether the bullet was fired by her or if her weapon was used by someone else.
Despite repeated summons by the court, she failed to appear before the court as she had moved to the U.K.
