2020 batch IPS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, Mr Balveer Singh will be prosecuted for accusation of custodial torture. The Tamil Nadu government has accorded formal sanction to prosecute him.
He was alleged to have subjected accused persons to custodial torture in the Ambasamudram sub-division where he served as Assistant Superintendent of Police.
Allegations of torture of crime suspects emerged in March this year and following that, Chief Minister M K Stalin ordered his suspension, and a high-level inquiry was initiated against the officer.
Sources said that the Crime Branch-CID of the Tamil Nadu police had completed the investigation into all four cases in which the IPS officer was accused of forcibly pulling out the teeth of 15 suspects who were taken to three police stations on various charges.
The police officer was born in Rajasthan’s Tonk and did his mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Singh, who turns 39 on May 17, was inducted into the IPS in 2020. He had earlier completed a six-year stint with the Indian Oil Corporation.
The investigating agency will now go ahead with the filing of a chargesheet against Mr. Singh and other police personnel who allegedly tortured suspects in Kallidakurichi, Vikramasingapuram and Ambasamudram police stations in 2022-23. An allegation under the provisions of the Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was not made out, and hence, the charge was dropped, the sources said.
Besides examining dozens of witnesses, including police personnel, the CB-CID relied on the report of a team of doctors, forensic evidence and CCTV footage while investigating the four cases.
