R.B. Sreekumar, who retired in 2007 as Director-General of Gujarat Police has written to Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde alleging that police officers in the State were being penalised and denied promotions out of political vendetta.
In his letter, a copy which is available with The Hindu , the 1971 batch IPS officer alleged that the trend of harassing well-meaning officials and propping up those who toed the State government’s political line has been continuing since the 2002 communal riots.
Mr. Sreekumar has been associated with non-governmental organisations like Citizens for Justice and Peace and helped in getting conviction for life imprisonment to as many as 116 people involved in “anti-minority mass crimes”.
He cited the instance of 1983 batch officer Pramod Kumar, who is the Additional Director-General of Police (Police Reforms), but also performing duties of a DGP as its head.
Mr. Sreekumar asserts, “Strangely, Shri Pramod Kumar, DGP is supervising his senior in service, namely Shri HP Singh (IPS –1980), Commissioner of Police, Rajkot city. So this arrangement is illegitimate and improper and is in flagrant violation of basic, fundamental and functional regulations and administrative conventions and it amounts to perpetuation of insubordination and injury to structural supervisory hierarchy in police.” Mr. Pramod Kumar was given the charge of the DGP after the death of the incumbent Amitabh Pathak on August 23 this year.
“If somebody challenges the validity of Shri Pramod Kumar’s orders to Shri HP Singh in a court of law, the State government would not have any legal or administrative grounds to vindicate its decision of posting a junior officer in IPS Civil List of Gujarat cadre for supervising the functions of his senior within the police department,” he added.
Mr. Sreekumar said the government’s policy of delaying promotions to officers in the ranks of the Deputy Inspector General of Police to DGP had further put the “the morale, motivation and professional competence of supervisory cadre of Gujarat police in a state of ceaseless decline.” This was not the first time, even earlier the government had kept the post of a regular DGP (Law and Order) vacant for over two years between 2010 and 2012 and it was he who had brought this to the notice of former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
