IPS officer had challenged departmental chargesheet issued to him by state government.
A bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) on Tuesday sought explanation from the state government regarding the departmental chargesheet issued to IPS officer Rahul Sharma, and posted the matter to January 12 for the next hearing.
The Ahmedabad bench of CAT issued notice to the state government while hearing Sharma's petition challenging the state government's decision to issue him a charges-sheet for submitting CDs of mobile call data before the Nanavati commission. The CDs submitted by Sharma contain a record of phone calls made in Ahmedabad during the initial days of the 2002 riots which saw many massacres in the city.
The mobile call data records were collected by Sharma when he was assisting the Ahmedabad crime branch in its investigation of infamous riot cases such as Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam and Gulbarg society massacres. The CDs later became key evidence in tracing the involvement of big politicians, police officers and bureaucrats in the riots.
Sharma is currently DIG, armed units, and is posted at Rajkot. He had challenged the government action through his counsels Dr Mukul Sinha and KG Pillai. The lawyers submitted before the court that the government itself had constituted the Nanavati-Shah enquiry commission to enquire into the 2002 communal riots and the role of different people in the gory incidents that had taken place.
"According to Section 6 of the Commission of Inquiry Act, the government is obligated not to take any action against those people who had appeared before the commission to give their version of events," said Sinha while talking to DNA.
The lawyer further said that CAT had earlier provided protection to former DGP, RB Sreekumar, when the government had failed to promote him because he had exposed the government's role before the Nanavati commission.
The government had issued a departmental chargesheet to Sharma a few months back and had initiated the process to start a departmental inquiry against him. When the IPS officer sought certain documents related to the allegations made in the charge-sheet, the state government did not provide him the documents. The documents were not provided to him even under the RTI Act.
Sharma had then approached the Gujarat high court. When he did not get any relief from the high court, he filed a petition before the CAT.
"The IPS officer has also made chief minister Narendra Modi a party respondent in the case. However, CAT has not issued notice against the chief minister as the court will hear the case first on legal points and merits," Sinha said.
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