'IPS officer victim of mining mafia-police-politician nexus'

Keshav, a police sub-inspector in Aligarh, in his deposition before the special CBI court of Justice Anupam Srivastava today said illegal mining was "rampart" in Morena and local police connived with the mining mafia to scuttle his son's efforts to curb illegalities.

"My son had told me that whenever he caught any tractor- trolley laden with illegal mined stones, there were calls from former IPS officer Rustam Singh, an ex-BJP leader and a former minister for releasing the vehicle," Keshav said during his examination by CBI's senior public prosecutor A H Khan.

Narendra Kumar, posted as Sub-Divisional Officer of Police (SDoP) at Banmore, was murdered on March 8 in Morena district when he was trying to stop a tractor-trolley, laden with illegally mined stones. Later, CBI in its charge sheet termed the incident as a case of culpable homicide and held the vehicle's driver Manoj Gujjar as sole accused.

"My son (Narendra) used to talk about rampant illegal mining and gambling-betting rackets in Morena district including Banmore where he was posted and wanted to expose them," Keshav said.

He told the court that Narendra even had call details of an IPS officer's wife who used to call up a police constable whenever "there is any delay in receipt of extortion money from mining mafia".

"Constable Rajkumar allegedly played a major role in illegal mining as he was posted for the last five years at Banmore police station," Keshav claimed.

He alleged that police and mafia were hand-in-glove in the district as some policemen would leak information regarding proposed raids to gamblers in advance. (More)