Patna
A senior police official in Bihar has been suspended after he shared a morphed photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi shaking hands with a Pakistani Islamist militant Hafiz Mohammad Saeed who is chief of a terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The suspension comes barely days before he was to retire from his service.
Mohammad Islam, 57, landed himself in trouble shortly after he shared this morphed picture of the Prime Minister on a WhatsApp group and also posted a derogatory comment, virtually calling the PM a “traitor”. The said official is currently posted as police inspector in Khagaria district, some 170km east of Patna.
The action came after a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Alok Kumar Vidyarthi who was also a member of this WhatsApp group noticed the post and registered a formal complaint with Khagaria police which soon ordered an investigation with the matter involving the executive head of the country.
Reports said during inquiry, charges were found to be true against the police official who also didn’t give a “satisfactory reply” on the explanation served on him by the local Khagaria district police. The cop in question reportedly clarified the said post was “inadvertently posted by his grandson” but the authorities said the act seemed intentional as neither did the cop delete the post nor did he apologise in the group.
“How can a person in government service post such objectionable posts against the Prime Minister? There are certain norms which need to be followed in government service, but the said cop violated them,” a senior police official Vikas Vaibhav who is deputy inspector general of police, told the media yesterday.
According to Vaibhav, the PM was mentioned as “traitor” in the morphed photograph and the police are also seeking legal opinions against the cop.
