Director-General of Police R.R. Girish Kumar has expressed surprise at Rajkot Police Commissioner Geeta Johri's claim that Andhra Pradesh police were stonewalling investigation into the encounter death of Sohrabuddin and said, “Ms. Johri never shared information with us.”
Initially reluctant to react to the observations of Ms. Johri in her curative petition to the Supreme Court ascribing the clandestine role of Andhra Pradesh police in the encounter, Mr. Girish Kumar told journalists at a police function here on Sunday that he was not in a position to deny or contradict or support the statement of the Gujarat cadre IPS officer who headed the investigation when it was carried out by police of her State.
To a question whether the Andhra Pradesh police would try to trace and nab Kaleemuddin, who Ms. Johri alleged hosted Sohrabuddin in Hyderabad prior to the encounter, the DGP said there would not be a problem in doing that if he was involved in any case. “Certainly, we will try to find him.” The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was on the lookout for him and the agency was taking care of the whole issue, he added.
Reacting to allegations of rights activists that CPI (Maoist) spokesman Azad was killed in a fake encounter in the forest of Adilabad district on July 1, the DGP said, they were blowing out of proportion the post-mortem report.
It had become the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the activists and Maoists to put the blame on police in adverse situations, he charged. According to them, their practices fell into a pattern aimed at blaming the police with false allegations whenever encounters took place or the Maoist cadre went missing. He said they moved habeas corpus petitions in the High Court when the cadre missed contact and withdrew the same if it was found to be a false alarm. The problem was discussed at the recent conference of DGPs in New Delhi a few days ago, he added.
