Senior Gujarat cadre IPS officer Geetha Johri, now police commissioner of Rajkot, has submitted her resignation from the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team investigating the 2002 communal riots, and has requested its chief, R.K. Raghavan, to relieve her at the earliest.
Under instructions from the Supreme Court, the SIT is investigating afresh nine of the relatively more gruesome massacres during the 2002 riots in the State. Besides Mr. Raghavan, the five-member team has three IPS officers from Gujarat, including Ms. Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia.
Ms. Johri’s resignation from the SIT has come in the wake of some adverse remarks made by the apex court about her way of investigation into another case, the Sohrabuddin alleged fake encounter case, in which she was heading a CID (crime branch) team to probe into the missives of former deputy inspector-general of police D.G. Vanzara and about a dozen other policemen from Gujarat and Rajasthan.
Ms. Johri confirmed that she had sent her resignation to the SIT chief stating that she was pained at being targeted personally. “Despite working under the apex court, I have to prove my credentials again and again.”
