Gurugram: In a late-night development Monday, the Haryana government sent Director General of Police Shatrujeet Singh Kapur on leave, amid mounting pressure from Dalit organisations and opposition parties over the alleged suicide of senior IPS officer Y. Puran Kumar who accused the DGP of harassment.
However, it is still not clear whether this will break the deadlock over the postmortem of Kumar’s body, since his wife, IAS officer Amneet P. Kumar has been demanding the state police chief’s arrest.
ThePrint reached Amneet P. Kumar through phone calls, but she didn’t respond.
Y. Puran Kumar, a 2001-batch Haryana cadre IPS officer allegedly shot himself dead at his residence 7 October. In his ‘final note’, he accused Kapur of driving him to take the extreme step by using Rohtak SP Narendra Bijarniya to frame him in a false corruption case.
Chief Minister Nayab Saini’s Media Advisor Rajiv Jaitley confirmed Tuesday morning that Kapur has been sent on leave.
When asked how many days the officer has been sent on the leave for, Jaitley said he didn’t have further information on this issue as he was informed about this development late Monday night.
The home department issued an order later giving the additional charge of the DGP to O.P. Singh, a 1992-batch IPS officer, currently Managing Director, Haryana Police Housing Corporation and Director, Forensic Science Lab, Madhuban, Karnal.
The development comes after a week of Kumar’s death. In his eight-page purported suicide note, he listed a series of caste-based slurs, harassment, humiliation, and discrimination he was allegedly subjected to by the DGP and 14 other IPS and IAS officers, including some retired ones.
Kumar, who was posted as IG, Police Training College, Sunaria (Rohtak) at the time of his alleged suicide, was found dead at his Sector 11 residence in Chandigarh with a gunshot wound.
The Chandigarh Police recovered the eight-page note from his pocket. In the note, he has given an account of the humiliation, harassment and discrimination he allegedly had to face because of his Scheduled Caste background. He also mentioned a criminal case registered against his gunman at Rohtak, allegedly at the behest of the DGP, for framing him in a case of corruption.
Kumar’s wife, herself an IAS officer of the 2001 batch and posted as Commissioner and Secretary, Departments of Future, Civil Aviation, and Foreign Affairs, has since been refusing to accord her consent for the postmortem of her deceased husband till Kapur and Bijarniya are arrested.
The body is now lying at the PGIMER, Chandigarh, mortuary. The Chandigarh Police Sunday wrote to Amneet to come and identify the body for its postmortem.
The case has exposed deep fissures in the Haryana’s law-enforcement agencies, since Kumar has alleged his persecution because of his caste, and it has also drawn the IAS and IPS lobby on different pages, with the IAS officers asking the government and the Chandigarh police to address Amneet’s concerns, while the IPS body merely offering its condolences.
With the Nayab Singh Saini government under tremendous pressure, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 17 October rally at Sonipat to mark one year of the BJP government’s third term in Haryana has been cancelled for now.
What adds to the political heat is that Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi visited the IPS officer’s family Tuesday morning, while Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan, who earlier wrote to Saini demanding action, is also coming.
The past one week has seen a plethora of Opposition leaders from Haryana, Punjab and other states visiting the family, with prominent being Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramaka, Union Minister Ramdas Athawale, Haryana Governor, Ashim Kumar Ghosh, and Congress leaders Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala and Deepender Singh Hooda.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)