RPF probe yet to be complete

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Friday, May 14, 1999
RPF probe yet to be complete
Kumar Shakti Shekhar
AHMEDABAD, May 13: Five months after the death of Railway Protection Force constable Rajesh Kumar Yadav, who was run over by a train at the local railway station while trying to escape Gujarat Railway Police (GRP) men, neither the preliminary inquiry nor the departmental inquiry ordered into the incident have been completed. And the two GRP officers suspended pending inquiry have already been reinstated.
Additional Director-General of Police (Railways) Gurdayal Singh attributes the delay to the preoccupation of the inquiry officer with ``more urgent matters''.
Singh said the inquiry officer was waiting for Yadav's family, which belongs to Rewari in Haryana, to come to Ahmedabad and make a statement. This, when the family had, during a visit in January, made it clear that their statement would serve no purpose as they had no first-hand knowledge of the incident. Besides, all the eye-witnesses were here, they had said.
However, the four eye-witnesses -- RPF sub-inspector M.I. Khan and constables Ram Singh Yadav, Nathu Lal, and Munishankar Mishra -- have been examined by the GRP and their statements recorded.
It was in the wee hours of December 9, 1998, that when 28-year-old Yadav was pulled out from the Jodhpur-bound Saurashtra Janata Express, taken to the GRP office on platform number 1, and badly beaten. Suddenly, Yadav, who is said to have been inebriated, ran out of the room, with GRP constables in chase. As he ran towards the railway yard between platforms 3 and 4, Yadav was run over by a train.
The GRP constables turned back, quietly returned to their office, leaving Yadav's body on the track. Three more trains passed over it before the body was removed around 6 a.m. The police not only registered it as a case of accidental death, but also sent the body to Civil Hospital for post mortem as ``unclaimed'', although Yadav's identity card was found on his person.
After Newsline took up the case, two GRP men -- sub-inspector B.R. Maachi and assistant sub-inspector Prabhatsinh Mangalsinh -- were suspended on December 20. But, for some unexplained reason, K.H. Das, former superintendent of police (Railways), Vadodara, ordered their reinstatement on March 10, the day before he was shifted as SP, Computer Centre, Gandhinagar.
Singh said while Das's discretion to reinstate the two officers could not be questioned, ``he should not have posted them again at the railway police station.'' The two have since been transferred, Maachi to Gandhidham and Mangalsinh to Bhavnagar, so that they do not tamper with evidence, Singh said, and promised that the inquiry would be completed by month-end, even if Yadav's family doesn't appear before the inquiry officer.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.