The two-member commission headed by Justice (retd) J N Patel passed the order seeking the IPS officers’ response to the summons by November 8.
The Bhima Koregaon Inquiry Commission on Friday issued summons to controversial IPS officers Param Bir Singh and Rashmi Shukla to appear as witnesses in the ongoing probe regarding the circumstances related to the violence on January 1, 2018.
The two-member commission headed by Justice (retd) J N Patel passed the order seeking the IPS officers’ response to the summons by November 8.
Singh, who is currently untraceable, was the Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) when the Koregaon Bhima violence took place. Shukla was the Pune Police Commissioner and is currently posted in Hyderabad as the Additional Director General of CRPF (South Zone).
"In fact even before and after the incident he held some positions in the state police. As such, he must have received some valuable inputs concerning the issue at hand," the panel said in its one-page order.
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The Commission’s lawyer Aashish Satpute on Friday filed an application that IPS officers Singh and Shukla should be called as witnesses, as it is necessary to bring forward intelligence inputs and all information received by the two officers pertaining to the violence. The application was allowed and the commission passed an order that the summons be forwarded to the state Home Department for service.
After nearly a gap of 14 months, the Koregaon Bhima Inquiry Commission had resumed hearing the case on August 2.
Violence had erupted near the Koregaon Bhima memorial on January 1, 2018, during the bicentennial celebration of the 1818 battle wherein the East India Company's forces, which included sepoys of the Mahar caste, a Dalit community, defeated the army of the Brahmin Peshwa ruler of Pune, PTI reported.
Dalits commemorate the victory as a symbol of the defeat of the old Brahmanical order. Pune Police had claimed that inflammatory statements made a day earlier at Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune on December 31, 2017, allegedly backed by Maoists, led to the violence, the report added.