Former police officer R B Sreekumar is all set to open a can of worms as he starts to write a book on 2002 Gujarat riots. Talking to The Indian Express, Sreekumar, who retired in February 2007 said: “The purpose of writing a book is to bring back into focus the role of the State Government in fanning the riots and most of the police force buckling under the whims and fancies of their political masters.’’Though he has yet not tied up with any publisher, he has sought assistance from a Vadodara-based university professor so as to club and present the facts chronologically to make it readable. “I have enough material to convert it into a book and I will do it soon,” he said. However, once hailed for challenging Chief Minister Narendra Modi, the former policeman seems to have changed his mind. He said that he holds no grudge against Modi even as his junior was promoted to the rank of director general of police. Sreekumar had earned the wrath of Modi for his report to the Election Commission of India and the National Minority Commission on 2002 riots and the then prevailing communal situation. The report had invited brickbats for the chief minister from all quarters. “Hate the sin, not the sinner,” he philosophised. However, he did not elaborate who was the sinner in his case and what was his sin. He has made Modi one of the respondents in his supercession case yet to be decided by the court. “As I am a firm believer in Gandhian ideology, I don’t hate anybody, not even Chief Minister Narendra Modi,’’ Sreekumar said. “Even after retirement, I am ready to offer my services to the government if it wants’’, said the former intelligence chief of Gujarat, sitting in his newly constructed house in Gandhinagar’s Sector 8, a stone’s throw from the State Secretariat. Post-retirement, Sreekumar says he wants to work for the downtrodden with the legal knowledge he acquired by doing LLB, LLM, and MA in Gandhian Studies from Madurai University. Till his retirement, Sreekumar had no work at all in the Police Reforms Department. He was appointed Additional Director General of Police (Intelligence) on April 9, 2002 but was dumped in the Police Reforms Department (September 17, 2002) from where he retired on February 26, 2007. He was without any staff during his entire term in the police reforms cell. A few days before he retired, in a letter circulated to his IPS colleagues, Sreekumar sought for “competitive sycophancy and anticipatory chamchagiri for extraneous vested interests’’ in police force to be done away with to make the police force emerge as “leaders in real modernisation’’. In the same breath, he suggested removal of “abominable and demoralising practices’’ like IPS officials using police personnel perform non-police domestic chores.
