Lucknow: Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday accused the Adityanath government of lowering the morale of the Uttar Pradesh police by removing its chief Mukul Goel.
Goel was, on May 11, removed from the post of Director General of Police on charge of inefficiency and neglecting his work and appointed as Director General (DG) of the Civil Defence department. Later DS Chauhan was made acting DGP of the state.
"Removing the DGP of UP on the allegation that he used to disregard government work, did not take interest in departmental work and was inefficient is a very childish excuse. It has lowered the morale of the police force," Yadav said in a tweet in Hindi.
He asked whether Goel's eligibility was not checked at the time of his appointment.
Goel, a 1987-batch IPS officer, was appointed the Uttar Pradesh police chief in June last year. Before that, he had served as an additional director general of the Border Security Force.
"Was his eligibility (of Goel) not checked at the time of his appointment, so those who selected him are also guilty," the SP president and former chief minister said.
Born in Muzaffarnagar, Goel has a B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
Director General (Intelligence) Devendra Singh Chauhan was on Thursday given additional charge of Uttar Pradesh DGP, a day after Mukul Goel was removed from the post of state police chief by the Yogi Adityanath government.
Chauhan, a 1988-batch IPS officer, has been given additional charge of state DGP till appointment of a permanent DGP, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi said in an order issued in Lucknow.
Rumours were rife that the chief minister was unhappy with Goel, after he was absent at a key meeting convened by him on the law and order situation in the state. The senior cop was also not attending team meetings and was not present during important departmental presentations like that of the home department, reported Hindustan Times.
The Uttar Pradesh Police has an extensive history of police brutality, misconduct, and corruption, as well as discrimination on the basis of caste and religion.
In 2018, India Today carried out an investigative piece reporting incidents of UP police framing innocent people and killing them in staged encounters for money and promotions. A sub-inspector had allegedly offered to gun down an innocent civilian for around Rs 8 lakh.
Between 2015–2018, 211 complaints of fake encounters were filed in India out of which 39 were on UP police. In 2012, 17 UP police personnel were given life term for killing an incontinent 24-year-old man in a 1992 fake encounter and later they branded the victim as a terrorist.
UP Police has allegedly been accused of unlawful politically motivated killing of Muslims and Dalits. In six cases examined by the Guardian of deaths in custody and police shootings of suspects, allegedly in self defence, from 2018 onwards, those accused of carrying out and covering up killings are the same.
The victims of these alleged unlawful killings were all from the communities that UP government, with its sectarian Hindu nationalist agenda, is accused of routinely targeting and oppressing the muslims.
(with inputs from PTI)
