‘Riots call data CD was intelligence info’

IPS officer,Rahul Sharma,who has been slapped with a showcause notice by the state government over the missing original CD containing phone call records of the 2002 riots,has told the special trial court for the Naroda Gam massacre case that the CD was ‘intelligence information’ and it is not necessary to put such things on record.

In his deposition before the court earlier this week,Sharma said he sent the CD through a rider (a common communication practice among police) to Jt CP Ahmedabad City Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) — P P Pande on July 5,2002 following his transfer to Surat. (It was at this juncture that the CD,which became key to some high-profile arrests in the 2002 riots cases,went ‘missing’). The CD is a vital evidence on which the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) is relying upon against some key accused,but the state government has been questioning its authenticity.

Sharma said he obtained the CD from the computer section of the Ahmedabad Police Commissionerate and sent it to Pande. The preparation of the CD was intelligence gathering,and there was no need to take it on record,he said. He,however,added that such information is considered very much part of the official record.

The IPS officer,who was deputed to assist and supervise the DCB probe into the riots cases of Ahmedabad by the then Commissioner of Police,K R Kaushik,said he collected the call data from the cell-phone service providers,but did not analyse them. He added that he prepared the CD after zipping the data provided by the cellphone service providers — an act the state government has termed as tampering with evidence before the Justices (Retired) Nanavati-Mehta Commission.