An officer of the Indian Police Services (IPS) cadre, Amitabh Thakur made an interesting move against members of his own cadre when he termed the IPS Association as illegal. He also went ahead with lodging of a criminal case against the officer bearers though the local police refused to do so and only gave him receipt of the complaint. The officer who is also an RTI activists now send a letter to district police chief of lucknow asking him to take legal action.

Amitabh Thakur who made the first revolt against the IPS Association when he resigned from it raising it’s legal status few months back. On Monday, he once again made a surprising move when he tried to get a case registered against the office bearers of the same Association which
had the senior most IPS officer of the State, Atul as it’s president and ADG (law and order), Arun Kumar as it’ssecretary besides other senior IPS officers including IG (lucknow Zone) Subash Kumar.

Amitabh Thakur claimed that IPS officers are also police officers, as stated in Para 398 of the UP Police Regulations. Hence, as per section 3(1) of the Police Forces (Restriction of Rights) Act 1966, they cannot form any Association other than for purely social, religious or entertainment
purposes, with specific permission of the Central or the State government.

He claimed that the RTI information sought by him from the State government regarding the above showed that IPS Association has not got the required permission at any level, which makes it’s existence illegal. He claimed that the officers holding the post in the Association are doing a criminal offence under Section 4 of the Police Forces (Restriction of Rights) Act so action must be taken against them.

Amitabh Thakur claimed that to get the criminal proceedings initiated against the officers of the IPS Association, he requested for registration of FIR against office-bearers of the UP IPS Association with the Mahanagar police station but they did not register an FIR but gave only a yellow receipt though it is a cognizable offence on Monday.

He said that finding that the local police is not registering him case, he dispactehd a later to SSP, lucknow asking him to get a case resgistered under the provisions of Section 154(3) of CrPC. Earlier also Amitabh Thakur supported the stand of Union formed by non-gazetted rank cops of the Department saying that if IPS officers could form the same than why not junior officers could do so. He also condemned the action taken by senior officers including the than DGP for cracking down on the office bearers of the Union of non- gazetted officers by terminating their jobs on one or the other pretext just to terrorise  the lower rank officials so they could not dare to form a Union.