New Delhi: Inspector General of Jammu and Kashmir police Basant Rath, who has been in the news for being involved in a tussle with the union territory’s police chief Dilbagh Singh, has been suspended with “immediate effect” for alleged “gross misconduct and misbehaviour”, officials said on Wednesday.
According to an order issued by the Union Home Ministry on Tuesday evening, Rath, a 2000-batch IPS officer at present posted to the Home Guards department in Srinagar, has been asked not to leave the headquarters without permission of the Director General of Police.
The order stated that disciplinary proceedings against Rath have been initiated in connection with “repeated instances of gross misconduct and misbehaviour” that have been brought to the notice of the government.
The order came exactly two weeks after Rath walked into a police station in Jammu’s Gandhi Nagar locality to file a complaint fearing for his “life, liberty and bald head” and named Singh as the “reason” for such apprehensions.
Rath made it clear that he was making the complaint as a “private citizen” and in his “personal capacity”.
Promoted to Inspector General rank in 2018, Rath was posted at the Traffic department during which he earned a lot of fan following for leading the force and disciplining traffic in his own style that included running after offenders and even entering into verbal duels in full public glare.
The feud with the police chief began in June when Rath’s reply to a tweet posted by a handle in the name of “dilbagh Singh” kicked up a storm on social media.
Rath referred as “dilloo” to the Twitter handle which is not an official handle of the police chief of the union territory.
This infuriated the police chief who posted his reaction in a private whatsapp group, with police personnel, bureaucrats and few journalists as members, in which he termed Rath as a “joker and useless”.
Rath was removed as IGP traffic after a public brawl with former mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation Junaid Mattoo.
