UP police officer, who had booked Yogi Adityanath under NSA, suspended

A file photo of constables of the U.P. police force.  

An IPS officer in Uttar Pradesh has been suspended weeks after he gave an interview to an English website on how he had been sidelined after he had booked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, then the Gorakhpur MP, under the National Security Act in 2002.

UP Police spokesperson R.K. Gautam confirmed that 1992-cadre IPS officer Jasvir Singh, who was last posted as ADG Rules and Manual, was placed under suspension. However, Mr. Gautam did not reveal the reason for suspension. As per the UP Police website, Mr. Singh was suspended on February 14. “ADG under suspension,” it read under his current post section.

Mr. Singh was the SP of Maharajganj district in Purvanchal in 2002, when he booked Mr. Adityanath under the stringent NSA. In a story published in Huffington Post on January 30, Mr. Singh is quoted as saying that he had refused to withdraw his case for preventive detention against the then sitting MP despite pressure from politicians of the Bharatiya Janata Party, who were in power at the Centre at the time, and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which formed the State government. Two days later, he was transferred to the Food Cell of the UP Police, said the article.

While narrating his ordeal over the years, the article says that under the Yogi Adityanath government which came to power in 2017, Mr. Singh had become “a pariah of the IPS.”

Mr. Singh says he paid a price for trying to hold politicians and ministers to account, as per the article, in which he also questions the encounter killings under the Yogi government.

Mr. Singh is quoted as saying: “They want loyalty to political persons. This is totally unconstitutional. If we don’t resist, things won’t change. Resisting is the most rewarding thing especially when there is a big allurement.”

The story also says that for the 26 years of his service, Mr. Singh held posts entailing actual police work only for six years. “Detested by his superiors, shunned by his colleagues, he has been written off as a troublemaker,” said the article.