Another kind of courage in uniform
Pandey was released on bail in February 2015 and, in three days, was reinstated and given charge of a probe against Satish Verma, the police officer whose SIT probe had led to Pandey’s indictment in the first place. In April 2016, he was appointed the acting Director General, Police, Gujarat — a first in the country for a police officer charged with murder on bail to be given this high responsibility.
By contrast, officers like Satish Varma and Rajnish Rai, whose intrepid investigations led ultimately to the charge-sheeting and arrest of the then home minister and senior police officers, have been consistently victimised. Rai was not posted even once to the same location as his wife, an IAS officer in Gujarat, ever since his probe in 2007. Rai was posted in distant Shillong, and Verma in Agartala. A number of charges were levelled against them, their confidential reports sullied, and they were both superseded for their promotions.
But both officers are unbroken, accepting stoically the personal and professional costs of doing what they believed was right. Rajnish Rai said to me that for him the highest satisfaction is that after the investigations that he and Satish Verma undertook, extra-judicial ‘encounter’ killings of alleged ‘dreaded’ terrorists came to an abrupt and absolute halt in Gujarat. Such ‘encounters’ had become had become commonplace between 2002 and 2005, and it was always claimed that those killed were bent on assassinating the chief minister. These would not have ended if these two officers had not demolished the long tradition of impunity from criminal investigation for custodial killings. This alone makes all that they have suffered and lost worthwhile for them.
Unsurprisingly, the government has responded promptly to Rai’s newest report with another punishment posting, this time out of Shillong to Andhra Pradesh. Rai’s latest report that pulls the lid off the long tradition of custodial killings in India’s north-east shows that his spirit and valour are undimmed.