Kerala govt buckles, removes top cop over Thrissur Pooram row

The release also said that state police chief Darvesh Sahib and a team led by him had submitted reports to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the controversies related to Kumar.

Kumar’s removal from the key post came a day before the Assembly session is scheduled to start in Kerala. The Congress-led Opposition, and even those from the ruling CPI(M)’s alliance partner CPI, have been demanding the removal of Kumar, who is known to be a close confidant of CM Vijayan.

The action is seen as an attempt to weaken the Opposition’s protest against the Chief Minister, who they accuse of harbouring the officer despite him facing allegations related to the botched conduct of Pooram this year. The government action, however, has not extended to removing the officer from the police department.

Among the allegations by the Opposition involving Kumar and the CM is the claim that the officer’s meeting with RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale in 2023 was meant to protect Vijayan’s interests. Kumar had met Hosabale in Thiruvananthapuram along with an RSS leader from Kerala, and had not specifically informed the state Home Department about it. The government ordered a probe into the incident last month when the Opposition raised the issue.

The issues related to the conduct of Thrissur Pooram, which came just days before parliamentary elections were held in the state, has been cited by many as one of the reasons for the BJP winning Thrissur constituency, the party’s only Lok Sabha seat from Kerala.

In April, the state government had ordered a probe by Kumar into the Pooram debacle, and Kumar submitted a report on it in the last week of September.

On examination of the report, the government found lapses on the part of Kumar, who was camping in Thrissur at the time of the festival, but allegedly did not intervene to ensure its smooth conduct. When police restrictions on crowd management led to the winding up of the rituals, BJP candidate Suresh Gopi’s dramatic intervention led to the resumption of the festival events. The Cabinet had also ordered a probe by the police chief into the lapses of Kumar.

Independent legislator P V Anvar, who had snapped ties with the CPI(M) recently, had also raised serious allegations against Kumar. Anvar had alleged that Kumar had links with gold smuggling gangs and that he had got people killed. The ADGP is also facing a Vigilance probe for allegedly amassing wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income.