Centre to act against 5 senior West Bengal cops

The central government is likely to take action against five IPS officers for participating in a dharna by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday.

Sources said the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will write to the West Bengal government to take action against DGP Virendra, additional director general (ADG) of police Vineet Kumar Goyal, ADG (law and order) Anuj Sharma, commissioner of Bidhannagar Gyanwant Singh and additional commissioner of police Supratim Sarkar.

Measures are being mulled such as stripping them of medals conferred for meritorious service. The Centre is also likely to remove their names from the empanelled list, and bar them from serving the central government.

Sources said the information was passed on to Banerjee while she was in at the inauguration of the fifth edition of Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS). While delegations from different countries spoke at Thursday's event, state home secretary Atri Bhattacharya and chief secretary Malay De came up to Banerjee. After an animated discussion, the trio left the stage for some time.

On Tuesday, when Mamata ended her sit-in demonstration, she had maintained that Commissioner Rajeev Kumar had not sat along with her at the dharna.