Patna, (Asian independent) Two tainted IPS officers of Bihar were suspended by the state Home Department on Tuesday.
A notification said Superintendent of Police, Purnea, Daya Shankar, and Gaya’s former Senior Superintendent of Police, Aditya Kumar, have been suspended.
Daya Shankar, a 2014 batch officer, is facing serious charges of corruption.
The Economic Offences Unit had raided his premises in Purnea and Patna last week and seized more than Rs 71 lakh cash, jewellery, and other valuables. He was booked under relevant sections of law in EOU police station, Patna.
The case of Aditya Kumar is more sensational as he allegedly planned with his friend Abhishek Agrawal to apply pressure on Bihar DGP S.K. Singhal to get a clean chit in a case registered against him in Gaya’s Kalyanpur police station.
Agrawal, impersonating Chief Justice of Patna High Court Sanjay Karol, made more than 30 calls to Singhal, applying pressureto remove the name of Aditya Kumar from the FIR. Singhal eventually submitted the report in court wherein he had mentioned “mistake of facts” in that case and given a clean chit to him.
Following that, Aditya Kumar rejoined duty as AIG in the police headquarters here.
Aditya Kumar, a 2011 batch IPS officer, was the SSP of Gaya when he was booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including for assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty, putting person in fear of death or of grievous hurt, in order to commit extortion, cheating, impersonation, forgery and more in Fatehpur police station having case number 312/2022 on the direction of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Besides him, SHO, Fatehpur, Sanjay Kumar was also a co-accused.
After the clean chit to Aditya Kumar, the case file reached the Chief Minister’s Secretariat but officials found something fishy in it and transferred it to EOU for the thorough investigation.
The EOU officials used cyber cell officials to scan the phone numbers which were used to call senior police officials who have prepared the report including the DGP.
During the investigation, two numbers – 9709303397 and 9431602303, both having a photo of Chief Justice Karol as the display picture – were found to be used by Agrawal to call the DGP, and several times, the DGP had called him on this number. Sometimes, Agrawal sent messages to him and said that he was busy. The DGP also made an appointment on Whatsapp to talk to him over phone.
“EOU has registered an FIR against Abhishek Agrawal and Aditya Kumar. Besides them, Gaurav Raj, Subham Kumar and Rajul Ranjan are also co-accused in this case. We will take strong action against the accused,” an EOU official said.
During investigation, it was also found that Aditya Kumar met Agrawal in a Patna restaurant to prepare the plan for the latter to pretend to be the Chief Justice.
The EOU, in its investigation, found that the phone numbers used to call the DGP did not belong to Chief Justice, put them under surveillance, and EOU officials then managed to nab Agrawal.
During interrogation, Agrawal confessed that he was having close links with Aditya Kumar for the last four years, and they had connived to get the police officer a clean chit.
A serial offender on this count, Agrawal faces a case in Delhi as well where he had posed as the Union Home Minister’s Secretary to threaten an MCD official. He was sent to Tihar jail for 5 days as well.
Agrawal also extorted Rs 1 crore from the father of IPS officer Saurav Shah and an FIR under various sections of the IPC was registered against him in Kahalgaon police station in Bhagalpur district as well.
He was also involved in threatening the SHO of a Patna police station in 2015.
