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Kotkhai custodial death case: Probe begins against ex-IG Zahur Zaidi’s personal security officer for pressuring woman IPS officer
Then Shimla SP Soumya Sambasivan alleged that she was pressured to change her statement following the custodial death of a Nepalese labourer suspected of the rape and murder of a school girl
Shimla: A departmental inquiry has been initiated against then personal security officer (PSO) of former inspector general of police (IG) Zahur Haider Zaidi for pressuring Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Soumya Sambasivan to change her statement in the Kotkhai custodial death case.
Sambasivan succeeded DW Negi as Shimla superintendent of police after the rape of a 16-year-old school girl led to protests in the state capital. Suraj, a Nepalese labourer, was one of the suspects arrested for the rape and murder of the girl, who went missing from her school at Mahasu on July 4, 2017. Two days later, her naked body was found in the forest area in Hilaila.
Zaidi headed the special investigation team investigating the crime that rocked political circles. Enraged over Suraj’s death in custody, local residents set ablaze the police station at Kotkhai.
Sources said that the police headquarters had submitted a report to the state government in March, which revealed that apart from Zaidi, his PSO also tried to pressurise the then Shimla SP. The security officer allegedly made calls to Sambasivan’s staff to make her talk to Zaidi. He also tracked Sambasivan and her personal staff’s movements.
The police will take action after the completion of the departmental inquiry.
On January 8, Sambasivan, a prosecution witness in the custodial death case, told the Central Bureau of Investigation court in Chandigarh that Zaidi had been trying to contact her over phone since September 2019. He used the phone of the Shimla police headquarters and made calls from his mobile phone via WhatsApp while trying to contact her and her subordinate staff.
“He continuously tried to pressure me to change my statement and has even said that I should be ready to face a team of lawyers and a 30-page questionnaire, adding that you will not inform this to the CBI (sic),” she had alleged in the court.
Sambasivan alleged that she was so disturbed on the work front that she had to report the matter in urgency to the DGP on December 10, 2019, at Dharamshala.
On the DGP’s intervention, Zaidi stopped calling her up from the police headquarters phone but used some people to contact her reader and personal security officer to know her location on a day-to-day basis and asked some people to make her speak on the PSO’s mobile.
Sambasivan was provided extra security to reach the court as she claimed that Zaidi used people to influence her and tried to find out her whereabouts through her subordinate staff till her arrival in court.
The former IG was placed under suspension on January 16.
