india

Updated: Mar 08, 2019 15:13 IST

Former IPS officer Bharati Ghosh has returned a medal and certificate for commendable service that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee gave her on August 15, 2014, saying she does not need them to prove her worth.

Ghosh had once described Mamata Banerjee as the “mother” of the former Maoist-dominated areas of West Bengal but resigned in 2017 after being transferred to a less significant post and faced CID investigation on charges of extortion.

The 51-year-old joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on February 4 in New Delhi. She alleged rule of thugs has replaced democracy in her home state. On February 28, Ghosh visited West Midnapore accompanied by BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and said that she has joined the BJP to work and not for any position.

Ghosh said she sent the medal and certificate by mail on Wednesday and that she wrote to the chief minister saying she should have returned them “much earlier”.

“The chief minister’s office declined to accept them when I sent the medal and certificate through a messenger. So I dispatched them through Speed Post,” Ghosh said on Thursday.

“My work speaks in Jungle Mahal and such medals are not needed. I hope other officers, be it in administrative service or police service, will follow my example and return their medals when they become victims of state repression or injustice,” she wrote to the chief minister.

“I would have returned the said Medal much earlier but the damage and loot by CID officers on 01.02.2018 in my matrimonial residence at Naktala left my residence in a shattered condition,” she wrote, adding the medal was dumped by CID officers “under a pile of wreckage.”

The BJP’s Bengal unit general secretary Sayantan Basu said the return of the medal by Ghosh shows apathy and humiliation by the government to officers.

“West Bengal is a state where a (former) IPS officer has to return her medal and another one has to take his own life. This proves what humiliation is heaped on them,” said Basu.

He was referring to former IPS officer Gaurav Dutt, who committed suicide on February 19 after alleging humiliation, persecution and denial of justice for ten years in a letter to the chief minister.

Though Ghosh was believed to be close to the chief minister, their relationship soured after the results of the Sabang assembly bypoll in West Midnapore district where she was the superintendent of police for six years.

She was transferred to the apparently less significant post of a battalion commandant of State Armed Police on December 26, 2017. Ghosh resigned from the service on December 28, 2017.

Last year, Ghosh was named in seven FIRs filed in police stations in West Midnapore on charges of extortion and illegal exchange of banned currency notes. The investigation was later handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

The FIRs were in connection with an incident of 2016 in which gold was allegedly taken from a trader who is a resident of the district. Four officers of inspector and sub-inspector ranks, who were co-accused in the cases, were arrested last year.

In August 2018, CID officers also raided a house that belonged to her husband MAV Raju, who was also arrested.

Ghosh went underground for several months until the Supreme Court granted her protection from arrests.