GL Singhal reinstated, given SRP posting

Ahmedabad, 28 May, 2014

Gujarat government on Tuesday reinstated suspended IPS officer GL Singhal, an accused in Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Singhal has been posted as Group Commandant of State Reserve Police at Gandhinagar. Singhal told PTI that he will work “aggressively”.

Singhal was suspended by the Narendra Modi government after his arrest in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case. Following his arrest and suspension, Singhal had resigned fron service, alleging the state government had failed to protect him. However, his resignation was not accepted on technical grounds. In July last year, CBI had charge-sheeted Singhal, three other IPS officers and others of lower ranks in connection with the alleged staged encounter of Ishrat and three others in 2004.

CBI had seized a pen drive containing 267 rcordings from Singhal’s house. One of the recordings was claimed to contain conversations between law officers of the state and ministers allegedly making plans to derail the Ishrat case probe, while some others purportedly had conversations between former minister of state for home Shah and Singhal making plans to snoop on a woman architect at the behest of “Saheb”. It was alleged that Saheb stood for Narendra Modi.The alleged taped conversation between Shah and Singhal was aired by news portals Cobrapost and Gulail which purportedly featured the former minister instructing the IPS officer to closely monitor the movements of the woman.