Four PIs transferred out of city

SURAT: Four police inspectors in the city were transferred to different districts of Gujarat on Friday. The transfers are part of the preparation to lodge a police complaint in Asif Amdavadi encounter against the then city police commissioner Kuldeep Sharma.
The four police inspectors were posted in the city at the time of encounter and have reportedly played a key role in it.The state government is preparing to investigate the encounter and the complaint in this regard will be lodged in Surat. The police inspectors were transferred out of the city for a free and fare investigation, sources informed. They were relieved from duty on Friday, the same day when the order of their transfer was issued.
R H Hadiya, Rander PI, has been transferred to Jamnagar, G R Patel, Chowk PI to Bhavnagar, V B Patel, Kapodra PI, to Junagadh, and R L Mavani, reader branch of Surat range IG, to Amreli.
The officers left the city on Saturday, but were not aware about the exact reason for their transfer when TOI contacted them. The officials refused to comment and just said the state government was well within its powers to transfer them.
Asif Amdavadi was killed in a police encounter in 1999 carried out by a team of crime branch officials which included M G Kaneriya, the then crime branch PI, and PSIs, R H Hadiya, V B Patel, G R Patel and R L Mavani. Kaneriya is now retired while the PSIs got promoted.
After the CID lodged a complaint in an encounter in Kutch during Sharma's tenure, it is believed that it was also investigating the Asif Amdavadi and Dilip Maratha encounters of 1999. Hajrabibi, mother of Amdavadi, had made an application demanding probe in the encounter of her son. CID officials had recently visited the city to get preliminary details of the encounter.