Three days before the case is to come up before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), the Gujarat government has voluntarily removed the adverse remarks against IPS officer Rajnish Rai, who shook the Narendra Modi administration during his investigation of the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. The officer is now holding the rank of Deputy Inspector-General of Police but has been on leave for the past six months or so.
Mr. Rai, who during his brief period of investigation into the Sohrabuddin case had arrested three of his IPS colleagues, D.G. Vanzara, Rajkumar Pandian and Dinesh Kumar M.N., filed a complaint before the CAT claiming that his immediate superior, O.P. Mathur, had failed to correctly assess his work and that the then State DGP, P.C. Pande, had deliberately made adverse remarks in his Annual Confidential Report (ACR) to deny him promotion. The case is scheduled to come up before the CAT on September 13.
According to Mr. Rai's advocate, Mukul Sinha, the Home department on Friday informed his client in writing that the government had accepted the representations he made in October last and expunged Mr. Pande's remarks. It would also upgrade his ACR to clear the decks for his promotion. The government earlier rejected the representation, in which he had protested against Mr. Pande's remarks and Mr. Mathur's assessment of his performance during the period from April 1 to August 22, 2007, when he was in-charge of the Sohrabuddin encounter investigation.
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Mr. Pande accused Mr. Rai of insubordination, claiming that he had failed to keep his superiors informed of the arrest of the IPS officers. Mr. Pande also filed a rejoinder before the CAT against Mr. Rai's application.
Mr. Rai, however, filed an affidavit giving details of how Mr. Pande, Mr. Mathur and other senior police officers had attempted to “obstruct” his investigations at the instance of the then Minister of State for Home, Amit Shah, who himself was later arrested for his alleged involvement in the case.