15 CBI officers awarded prestigious HM's medal for excellence in investigation

 New Delhi | Fifteen CBI officers who successfully solved murder cases of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and BJP leader Yogesh Gowda besides the sensational Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse case are among over 100 police investigators awarded the prestigious 'Union Home Minister's Medal for Excellence in Investigation' for 2020.

"The 'Union Home Minister's Medal for Excellence in Investigation' for the year 2020 has been awarded to 121 Police personnel," a home ministry statement said.

With 15 medals, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has topped the tally this year for exemplary investigations, followed by state police of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra (10 each), Uttar Pradesh (8), Kerala and West Bengal (7 each), it said.

"The Ministry of Home Affairs has initiated this scheme for award of medals to the members of Central Investigating Agencies and State/UT Police Investigating Agencies for excellence in investigation," CBI Spokesperson R K Gaur said.

The medal was constituted in 2018 with the objective to promote high professional standards of investigation of crime and to recognise such excellence in investigation by investigating officers.

Among the CBI officers awarded the medal is Subhash Ramrup Singh, ASP, Special Crime Branch, Mumbai. He rummaged through the depths of the Thane creek with the help of high-end equipment and a diving team to find the firearm allegedly used to murder Dabholkar in 2013.

The investigation by Singh and his team also provided a clue to three other similar murders of writer and thinker M M Kalburgi, journalist Gauri Lankesh and Leftist politician Govind Pansare.

Another recipient of the medal is Inspector Rakesh Ranjan posted in Bengaluru. He solved the murder of BJP worker Yogesh Gowda in Karnataka's Dharwad. A charge sheet was filed against eight people in the case.

Inspector Perwez Alam posted in Ranchi, who solved the blind murder of engineering student Jaya Bharti whose body was found in her room in Booty Basti in the city, is also among the recipients.

Using dump data of mobile phones operational on the day of the crime, Alam and his team scanned over 300 people, questioned 150, and collected 11 blood samples to zero in on the rapist and murderer who had been arrested by the Lucknow police for mobile theft and was in jail.

The accused, a serial molester, was sentenced to death on the basis of the CBI investigation in the student's rape and murder case.

Another awardee is Inspector Vibha Kumari who investigated the infamous Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse.

Kumari developed a watertight case collecting forensic evidence and recording statements of the girls in the presence of experts from NIMHANS which resulted in the conviction of the main accused, Brajesh Thakur, and 11 others. All 12 were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Superintendent of Police Cephas Kalyan Pakerla posted at CBI ACB, Hyderabad was also awarded the medal for his investigation in the i-Monetary Advisory (IMA) scam.

As part of the scam, a large number of gullible investors were allegedly duped in the name of higher returns using Islamic banking methods. Several senior police officials are under the scanner of the agency for protecting the main accused Mansoor Khan.

Another awardee, DSP Mukesh Sharma posted at the CBI's famous Special Crime Unit in Delhi solved the rape and murder of a minor girl in a police station in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri.

The girl's body was found hanging from a tree in Nighasan police station in 2011. An Uttar Pradesh Police constable was awarded life sentence in February this year in the case.

Inspector Duli Chand Yadav who solved the BITS Pilani paper leak case, Inspector Jyotirmoyee Majhi who solved chit fund cases of Jharkhand, and Shiv Kumar Jha who solved the Vyapam scam related to admissions in Gandhi Medical College, Indore using proxy candidates in 2009 are also among the awardees from the CBI.

Other awardees are Rajan Kumar Jha, DSP, Mumbai, and inspectors Vijaya Vaishnavi from Bengaluru, Prashant Kandpal from Dehradun, Parvender Kumar Mathur from Delhi, K Bindhu from Chennai and Ashish Anand from Ranchi.