The Hindu : National : Sreekumar wins battle against Modi government

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Sreekumar wins battle against Modi government

Special Correspondent

GANDHINAGAR: The Gujarat government has promoted the former Additional Director-General of Police, R. B. Sreekumar, post-retirement, DGP.

Mr. Sreekumar, who fought a single-handed battle against the Narendra Modi government, was conferred the DGP rank by a Home Department order with retrospective effect from February 2005. He retired in February 2007.

The supersession of Mr. Sreekumar by his junior, K. R. Kaushik, triggered the legal battle between him and the government.

‘Justice never denied’

“India’s judicial structure is still strong. Justice may be delayed but it is never denied,” a happy Sreekumar said just after he was given the order on Thursday.

Mr. Sreekumar fell foul of the Modi government after he, as Intelligence chief of the State, reported to the then Chief Election Commissioner, J. M. Lyngdoh, prior to the 2002 Assembly elections that the situation was not conducive to free and fair polls.

The government issued a nine-point charge sheet in 2005 after he filed affidavits before the G. T. Nanavati-K. G. Shah Judicial Inquiry Commission showing alleged police complicity in the 2002 communal riots as well as the roles of some “highly placed” persons in the conflagration.

Transferred to less important positions and subsequently superseded in 2005, Mr. Sreekumar approached the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT). Its first verdict was a split one but the subsequent ruling, which came six hours before his retirement on February 28, 2007, was categorical and termed his supersession illegal and “bad in law.”

The CAT observed that the government was wrong in denying the officer his due promotion. It went in appeal but a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court on October 10, 2007 upheld the CAT verdict.

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