A day before the special CBI court in Mumbai was scheduled to pronounce its verdict in the high profile alleged fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, his wife Kauser Bi and his aide Tulsiram Prajapati, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday suspended Gujarat cadre IPS officer Rajnish Rai, who was the first investigator of the alleged fake encounter and had arrested three IPS officers as key accused.
In 2007, as DIG in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)-Crime in Gujarat, Mr. Rai had arrested three IPS officers: D.G. Vanjara and Rajkumar Pandian of the Gujarat cadre, and Dinesh M.N. of the Rajasthan cadre, as key accused in the fake encounter case.
Mr. Rai is a 1992 batch IPS of Gujarat cadre and currently serving on central deputation, heading the Counter Insurgency and Anti-Terrorism (CIAT) School of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Chittoor in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
His suspension came a few months after he sought Voluntary Retirement from Service (VRS) in August this year and had reportedly written to the MHA that he may be considered deemed to have resigned from the service. The Centre, however, had rejected his plea seeking VRS.
Nevertheless, he had stopped attending office after his applying for VRS, and on the ground of his absence from the place of posting, his suspension order was issued.
He even challenged the MHA’s order rejecting his plea for VRS before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) in Ahmedabad.
In its order, the MHA stated that disciplinary proceeding was contemplated against Mr. Rai in “connection with his unauthorised handing over the charge of IG & Principal, CIAT School, CRPF, Chittoor and abdication of office on 30.11.2018.”
The order also said that till the time he was under suspension, Mr. Rai would not leave Chittoor without the permission of Director General of CRPF.
The suspension order was delivered to Mr. Rai’s residence in Vadodara. While receiving the suspension order, Mr. Rai marked his “protest.”
A brief summary of Fake encounter Case has many twists and turns :
On November 23, 2005, Sohrabuddin Sheikh was traveling on a public bus with his wife, Kauser Bi, from Hyderabad to Sangli, Maharashtra. At 01:30 am, the Gujarat police ATS stopped the bus and took them away. Kauser wanted to stay with her husband, but was taken to a Disha farmhouse outside Ahmedabad instead.
Three days later, Sheikh was killed in an alleged staged encounter on a highway at Vishala Circle near Ahmedabad. The report filed in the Supreme Court by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) quotes a number of witnesses and builds up a narrative of the killing.
Two days after Sheikh was killed, Kauser Bi was allegedly raped, strangulated, and cremated in Illol, the native village of deputy commissioner of police D G Vanzara. The killing of Kauser Bi was subsequently admitted by the Gujarat state attorney in front of the Supreme Court.
The encounter killing was not exposed until a media report made a year later. This report, together with a petition filed in the Supreme Court by Sheikh’s brother, led to investigations into the incident. In April 2007,
Mr. Rai had arrested three IPS officers: D.G. Vanjara and Rajkumar Pandian of the Gujarat cadre, and Dinesh M.N. of the Rajasthan cadre, as key accused in the fake encounter case.
In July 2010, Amit Shah was arrested, and it was reported that the CBI was interested in investigating Chief Minister Narendra Modi as well, and because of this, the case should be placed under the jurisdiction of a court not in Gujarat.
