IPS officer Saurabh Tripathi posted as DCP in SID

IPS officer Saurabh Tripathi has been posted as DCP in the State Intelligence Department, two months after his suspension was revoked. Tripathi was accused in an extortion case involving the Angadia Association.

Two months after revoking his suspension, the state government on Monday posted Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Saurabh Tripathi as deputy commissioner of police (DCP) in the State Intelligence Department.

Mumbai, India - March 22, 2022: Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Saurabh Tripathi suspended by Maharashtra home department after being booked in the Angadia extortion case, in Mumbai, India, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022. (HT Photo) (Hindustan Times)

Tripathi, 40, a 2010-batch IPS officer, was suspended after he was named as an accused in the Angadia extortion case registered at LT Marg police station.

On December 7, 2021, Yogeshbhai Gandhi, Jatin Shah, Madhusudan Rawal, Maganbhai Prajapati and others of Bhuleshwar Angadia Association met additional commissioner of police Dilip Sawant and filed a written complaint against Tripathi. They alleged that three police officers attached to LT Marg police station had extorted ₹19 lakh from Angadia employees in south Mumbai earlier that month on Tripathi’s instructions.

On orders of the then Mumbai CP Sanjay Pandey, Sawant conducted an inquiry and based on his report, the LT Marg police on February 18, 2022, booked inspector (crime) Om Wangate, inspector Nitin Kadam, and assistant inspector Samadhan Jamdade. An FIR was registered under section 341 (wrongful restraint), 384 (extortion), 392 (robbery) and 34 (common intention) of Indian Penal Code.

“The inquiry revealed that the three policemen had on December 2, 3, 4 and 6 wrongfully stopped employees of Angadia service providers at Paphalwadi and extorted money from them after threatening to report them to the income tax department,” the FIR said.

Tripathi, who was the DCP, zone 2, at that time went incommunicado the very next day. He was named as an accused after Wangate purportedly revealed his name in his interrogation that they had acted on Tripathi’s instructions.

Wangate and the two other officers were arrested on March 10. The sessions court granted them bail on May 9, on the grounds that the Angadias and their employees had failed to identify the three officers in test identification parade conducted on April 22.

Subsequently, the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Mumbai police that had taken over the probe, named Tripathi as an accused in its application filed before a metropolitan magistrate court and sought police custody of the three arrested officers.

The crime branch issued a lookout circular against the IPS officer and even dispatched teams to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh multiple times but could not trace him. On March 22, the home department suspended him, pending a departmental enquiry.

CIU, on April 8 named Tripathi’s father Neel Kanth Tiwari (a retired government employee who had met with a near-fatal accident in December 2021) as an accused in the case, claiming he was the recipient of the tainted money sent by Tripathi from Mumbai.

The Mumbai high court on November 15, 2022, granted Tripathi anticipatory bail. The state government on June 23 this year revoked his suspension.