THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The crime branch has widened the inquiry into the missing cartridges of the state police as the probe team has decided to interrogate officials up to the rank of assistant commandant, who is responsible for accepting the cartridges from the police chief store.
The crime branch team has decided to interrogate the current assistant commandant and former assistant commandants of special armed police (SAP), as it was found that the cartridges went missing during the custodianship of seven inspectors. The crime branch team has recorded the statements of the officials of the police chief store from where the cartridges are distributed. The probe team also examined the records at the police chief store.
In the SAP, the crime branch team found that during 2012-13 alone, as many as 3,624 cartridges went missing. It is in this context that the crime branch team decided to interrogate all the assistant commandants of various periods in the last 22 years.
The crime branch team had, on Wednesday, arrested a sub-inspector of police who was the quarter master in the SAP after ascertaining the officer’s role in replacing the missing cartridges with forged ones. Crime branch sources said that though he was among the 11 lower ranking officers against whom the case was originally registered, his role was evident as he was found to have committed forgery. “The probe will go beyond these 11 lower ranking officers, as they are only immediately responsible for handling the cartridges. But the responsibility of maintaining the cartridges goes to the higher officers as well,” a top crime branch source said.
Meanwhile, a section of the officers is unhappy with the crime branch action of arresting a sub-inspector on criminal charges. “There is a section who feels that only departmental responsibility should have been fixed on the official and not criminal charges. But forging cartridges is not a matter to be reduced to a departmental inquiry alone, it is a criminal offence,” sources added.
The crime branch team has decided to interrogate the current assistant commandant and former assistant commandants of special armed police (SAP), as it was found that the cartridges went missing during the custodianship of seven inspectors. The crime branch team has recorded the statements of the officials of the police chief store from where the cartridges are distributed. The probe team also examined the records at the police chief store.
In the SAP, the crime branch team found that during 2012-13 alone, as many as 3,624 cartridges went missing. It is in this context that the crime branch team decided to interrogate all the assistant commandants of various periods in the last 22 years.
The crime branch team had, on Wednesday, arrested a sub-inspector of police who was the quarter master in the SAP after ascertaining the officer’s role in replacing the missing cartridges with forged ones. Crime branch sources said that though he was among the 11 lower ranking officers against whom the case was originally registered, his role was evident as he was found to have committed forgery. “The probe will go beyond these 11 lower ranking officers, as they are only immediately responsible for handling the cartridges. But the responsibility of maintaining the cartridges goes to the higher officers as well,” a top crime branch source said.
Meanwhile, a section of the officers is unhappy with the crime branch action of arresting a sub-inspector on criminal charges. “There is a section who feels that only departmental responsibility should have been fixed on the official and not criminal charges. But forging cartridges is not a matter to be reduced to a departmental inquiry alone, it is a criminal offence,” sources added.
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