IRS officer suspended for assaulting jr over cricket tiff

Lucknow: Income tax joint commissioner Yogendra Kumar Mishra was suspended Wednesday, six days after allegedly assaulting a junior officer during a closed-door departmental meeting in Lucknow, reportedly over a cricket team captaincy row.A 2014-batch IRS officer currently posted in Uttarakhand's Kashipur, Mishra now faces a criminal probe. His headquarters has been shifted to Kolkata. Pending inquiry, he has been barred from leaving headquarters without permission.Gaurav Garg, a 2016-batch IRS officer, filed an FIR last Friday at Hazratganj police station in Lucknow, accusing Mishra of a violent, premeditated attack on May 29. Mishra allegedly stormed into a sixth-floor conference room, abused and assaulted Garg in front of commissioner Richa Rastogi and additional commissioner Shourya Shashwat Shukla, attempting to strangle him and stab him with a broken glass tumbler.Police took Garg to hospital. A case has been registered under multiple sections of BNS, including attempt to murder and criminal intimidation.Mishra took to X, claiming he is the target of a vendetta campaign led by Garg. He alleged efforts to expose tax probe lapses during his Kanpur tenure are being buried through police and media pressure. He dismissed the cricket-related issue as "minor" and "amicably resolved"."My son's FIR wasn't even registered," he said. A police team on Wendesday visited I-T office to check CCTV footage of the incident and recorded statement of the complainant, IRS officer Gaurav Garg.Now, a police team will visit the office again on Thursday to physically collect the DRVs of the CCTV footage and send them to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination.