NHRC proposes, Bihar Police HQ disposes

In a brazen bid to hoodwink the National Human Rights Commission, the Bihar Police headquarters has sat on a DIG’s inquiry report on alleged violation of human rights by a district SP and instead forwarded to it an IG’s opinion on the report, trashing the DIG’s findings that policemen tortured prisoners inside Bettiah jail on the night of May 29-30, 2009. Ironically, the DIG’s report was based on statements of witnesses as well as medical evidence while the IG’s "opinion" was based on "review" of certain documents.

According to NHRC sources, the rights panel received a petition from jail inmates in June 2009, alleging violence against them on the orders of the then SP K S Anupam. The commission sought a report from the state police HQ, which asked the then Bettiah DIG, Paresh Saxena, to probe the matter.

The DIG visited the jail and examined witnesses, including jail staffers and the magistrate, who corroborated the allegations. He also looked at the jail hospital’s records, which revealed injuries to at least six prisoners.

TOI, in its Patna edition on September 19, 2009, reported the state home (prisons) department’s move to take action against the jail staffers concerned. However, the then ADG (police HQ) Neelmani, currently the state DGP, told TOI on September 18 the same year that action, if any, would be taken against the accused cops after the Muzaffarpur IG gave his opinion on the DIG’s report.

On the same day, September 18, the police HQ sought the Muzaffarpur IG’s opinion. Sixteen months on, IG Gupteshwar Pandey on February 25 this year gave his opinion, citing four "flaws" in the DIG’s report.

One, the DIG quizzed only one of the petitioners. Two, the DIG did not take the statement of the cops concerned. Three, though the jail superintendent and the magistrate told the DIG about the torture, they had not brought the matter on official records earlier. Four, the DIG should have got the prisoners examined by a medical board, which he did not.

An IPS officer at the CBI HQ here, however, pooh-poohed the "flaws". If one petitioner corroborated the allegations, examining the others was not needed, he said. The DIG’s failure to take the cops’ version is hardly a lapse for they would have in any case denied the incident. Also, the prisoners would not have sought justice from NHRC had the magistrate and the jail superintendent reported the incident and the state government taken action.

"There was no need for a medical board since the jail hospital’s records, which were also submitted in courts within three days of the incident, point to multiple injuries," the CBI official said and wondered how the IG could write that there were no signs of injuries on one of them even as he had "multiple tender joints", according to medical reports.

Incidentally, R S Bhatti, not Pandey, was the IG in Muzaffarpur when the police HQ in 2009 sought a review of the DIG’s report. Threeofficers have since been posted as Muzaffarpur IG, the third being Pravin Bashishth. While Bhatti and Bashishth did not react to the HQ communiqué, Pandey did.

Pandey’s is not a run-of-the-mill story. He is probably the only IPS officer in the state who was reinstated almost nine months after he opted for VRS to contest the Lok Sabha election in 2009. In response to allegations of his proximity to the state’s ruling alliance, the Election Commission transferred him out of the Muzaffarpur IG’s office during the assembly elections in 2010.

After the elections, he was sent back to Muzaffarpur and he put the record "straight" that no one tortured Bettiah prisoners in 2009. To help him reach the conjecture, the denial of the SP as well as the new DIG reached him on February 22 and 24, a day before he signed his report on February 25 this year.