Kerala police chief files report critical of ADGP Ajith Kumar's conduct
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With only eight days left for his retirement, State Police Chief Shaik Darvesh Saheb, who had probed the allegations against former Law and Order ADGP M R Ajith Kumar in connection with the Thrissur Pooram fiasco, on Monday filed his report with the state government.
The report has contents critical of the conduct of the officer, sources said.
The report allegedly said there was a lapse from the part of Ajith during the whole episode. Revenue Minister K Rajan had testified before the police chief that when the Pooram faced disruption, he tried to reach Ajith over phone. However, Ajith did not respond. To this, the officer stated before the police chief that he had returned to his room after overseeing all the security preparations. By the time the minister telephoned him, he had fall asleep and hence he did not see the calls.
The report said the reply of the officer that he fell asleep showed that he erred in his performing his duties fully. Sources said the report has adverse remarks against the officer, including his meetings with the RSS office-bearers, but it's yet to be known what the general outlook of the full report is.
The 2024 Pooram was disrupted allegedly due to police high-handedness precipitating a political row. The fiasco occurred prior to the Lok Sabha polls and there were allegations that the Pooram was sabotaged for political purpose. After NDA candidate Suresh Gopi managed to win the seat, the allegation grew in strength and was endorsed by LDF candidate V S Sunil Kumar and UDF's K Muraleedharan.
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Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on 'Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers' had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More
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