Fake encounter: CRPF IG Rajnish Rai may be quizzed

NEW DELHI: Senior IPS officer Rajnish Rai, who has lodged a complaint about an alleged fake encounter in Assam, may be examined by Union Home Ministry officials, who have been asked to carry out an internal probe into the matter.

Official sources today said that all circumstances and merit of his complaint are being looked into and the officer may be quizzed.

In case, the complaint is found to be motivated or false, then a counter case can also be registered against those involved in it, they said.

Rai, Inspector General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), had sent a report to the paramilitary force’s headquarters and others claiming that two men had been killed in the alleged staged encounter in March in Assam’s Chirang district.

Following the complaint, the officer, who was then in charge of the Northeast sector of the force, has been transferred to Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh.

Former Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Ashok Prasad is likely to travel to Assam to look into the case.

Prasad, currently a technical advisor in the Union home ministry, will inquire whether or not the conduct of the officer was within the parameters of the rules, whether he has conducted a “discreet” inquiry on his own and whether or not he exceeded his jurisdiction by preparing the report, which was then shared with higher ups here.

Rai, in his report, had alleged that the encounter carried by a joint squad of security forces in Assam in March was fake and it killed two persons in cold blood claiming they were NDFB ((Songbijit) rebels.

Rai, a 1992-batch IPS officer of Gujarat cadre, said he had conducted a “discreet” inquiry on his own chronicling how a team of the Assam Police, the Army, the CRPF, its jungle warfare unit COBRA and the border guarding force Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) conducted the encounter on March 29-30 in Simlaguri area of Chirang district and killed what they called were two insurgents of the banned group NDFB (S).