Bihar’s Gagandeep Gambhir, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the 2004 batch, will be a part of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team investigating the death of Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The case was handed over to the central agency by the Bihar government after Rajput’s father KK Singh and the Bihar police alleged a cover-up by the Mumbai Police.
CBI on Thursday filed a case into Rajput’s death naming his former girlfriend Rhea Chakraborty, her brother Showik Chakraborty and four other members of her family or known associates apart from unknown persons as accused.
Gambhir, along with senior IPS officer Manoj Shashidhar, will supervise the case which is being probed by a special investigation team under superintendent of police Nupur Prasad. Shashidhar, a 1994-batch IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre, is the joint director of the central agency.
The IPS officer’s father, Yogendra Singh Gambhir, as saying that his daughter studied at school in the city. He said Gagandeep was a bright and hardworking student from the beginning. She moved to Punjab after her Class 10 and completed her higher education from Panjab University. She was also the topper of Panjab University.
Gagandeep has been a senior superintendent of police (SSP) in many districts in the western state, including Rajkot and has been posted in CBI for the last year and a half. She has also been a part of teams probing many high-profile cases, including the big scams.
She had also supervised the investigation into the alleged role of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in the illegal mining case. She was later shifted to the unit probing the Srijan scam and the case against journalist Upendra Rai. She also had the additional charge of DIG in the special investigation team headed by Joint Director Sai Manohar.
The team, which was earlier headed by Rakesh Asthana, is probing important cases like that of Vijay Mallya and Agusta Westland. It is also probing some coal scam-related cases, among others.
The Maharashtra police have questioned the jurisdiction of the Bihar police in the matter. A final call on this matter—whether Bihar police have the jurisdiction to transfer a case to CBI—will be taken by the Supreme Court later this week.
KK Singh has alleged in his police complaint that Rhea Chakraborty and his family drove his son to suicide and appropriated Rajput’s assets. After Rajput’s father lodged the complaint, Patna Police registered a case including charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and abetment to suicide against Chakraborty, her parents Indrajit Chakraborty and Sandhya Chakraborty, brother and common friends Samuel Miranda and Shruti Modi.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is separately investigating the case as it suspects there has been money laundering by some suspects.
