Charges dropped against 3 IPS officers

The State government has dropped all charges against three IPS officers who were allegedly involved in illegal mining cases, and named in the Lokayukta report.

On January 25, the Cabinet accepted the report from the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms on the officials allegedly involved in illegal mining cases. It said that the charges against KSRP Commandant Sonia Narang, Raichur SP M N Nagaraj and AIGP (Crime) Eshwar Chandra Vidyasagar have been dropped since there was no “circumstantial corroborative evidence” which linked the officers with illegal mining.

It may be recalled that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in July 2013 had named Narang as one of the officers who had encouraged illegal mining in the State. ly. While Narang worked as the Belgaum SP, Nagaraj was the Bellary SP during the heights of illegal mining. Vidyasagar was deployed as Koppal SP during the same period. The names were mentioned in the Lokayukta report based on the diary of Karapudi Mahesh, which named 133 police officers.