Who is RB Sreekumar, the controversial cop arrested along with Teesta Setalvad in the Gujarat riots case?

Saturday was unlike any other day for 75-year-old RB Sreekumar when the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch came knocking on his doors in Gandhinagar and arrested the former Gujarat Director General of Police (DGP).

The arrest on charges of forgery and criminal conspiracy came a day after the Supreme Court called into question his role in the petition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Gujarat riots of 2002.

The court was listening to a plea filed by Zakia Jafri challenging the SIT’s clean chit to the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots case.

Sreekumar was arrested along with social activist Teesta Setalvad based on a complaint filed by an Ahmedabad crime branch official.

Who is RB Sreekumar?

According to a report by ThePrint, the grandson of eminent freedom fighter and journalist G Raman Pillai, Sreekumar was educated in Thiruvananthapuram and joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1971.

As per The Indian Express, Sreekumar holds a master’s degree in history from Kerala University and also has a master’s degree in Gandhian thought, English literature, and criminology (LLM).

In his nearly four-decades long career, he served as Superintendent of Police in seven districts and received two President’s Police Medals.

Sreekumar, however, wasn’t averse to controversial incidents here and there. For a 1986 case of alleged custodial violence, he was discharged.

Sreekumar was recognised for his work in five Kutch-border espionage cases by then-Intelligence Bureau director HA Barari in 1987.

His first encounter with a large-scale controversy came when he was serving as deputy director at the Bureau’s Kerala station in 1994. The ISRO case involving scientist Nambi Narayanan created ripples in several lives.

The ISRO espionage case

Sreekumar along with other officers of Kerala police and Intelligence Bureau were accused of falsely implicating former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan and others in an espionage case.

While the case was scrapped against all the accused in 1998, it derailed Sreekumar’s career inside the Intelligence Bureau.

Narayanan welcomed Sreekumar’s arrest saying that he was happy about the arrest as the police officer did the same in his case as well.

“I came to know that he was arrested today for keeping on fabricating stories & trying to sensationalise them, there was a charge against him. It is exactly what he did in my case,” Narayanan told news agency ANI.

He returned to Gujarat in 2001 and was appointed the Additional DGP (Intelligence) in April 2002 by then-chief minister Narendra Modi.

The 2002 Gujarat riots By the time Sreekumar was appointed Additional DGP, the state had already become victim of communal riots after the Sabarmati Express train was burnt in Godhra on 27 February.

Even as the state government maintained that the law and order situation was under control and the environment was peaceful enough for Assembly elections, Sreekumar presented a report to then-Chief Election Commissioner JM Lyngdoh saying 154 of Gujarat’s 182 constituencies had been affected by the riots.

His report also stated that over one lakh people were disenfranchised due to displacement. It was due to Sreekumar’s report that the Election Commission cancelled the plans to hold early elections in Gujarat.

He was one of the very few officials who testified against the Gujarat government before the Nanavati Commission that looked into the 2002 riots.

According to The Indian Express, Sreekumar was transferred out of CID (Intelligence) soon after he sent a report to the National Commission for Minorities in September 2002. He had pointed out “communal overtones” in Modi’s speech during a yatra.

Out of CID, Sreekumar was posted as ADGP (Police Reforms) and remained in the post till his retirement in 2007.

Post-retirement career

Sreekumar was denied promotion as DGP in 2005, however, on the day of his retirement, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) ruled that Sreekumar should be promoted to DGP, which was upheld by the SC in 2008.

Sreekumar had joined the Aam aadmi Party in March 2014.

He published a book on the 2002 riots, titled “Gujarat Behind the Curtain”, in 2015. With inputs from agencies

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