In Gujarat, The bad cops are back in business, the good cops are in the boondocks.

IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt and IAS officer Pradeep Sharma (now under suspension) have similar stories of government harassment. Bhatt has been facing the state government’s ire since his statement that he was present at a meeting at which chief minister Narendra Modi had asked police and officials to go easy on rioters in the 2002 communal riots. He has been under suspension since 2011. In 2013, the state government had written to the Union home ministry, seeking Bhatt’s dismissal. The home ministry has proposed that the UPSC take strict disciplinary action against Bhatt. He had also been arrested in 2011: a constable had complained that Bhatt had forced him to file an affidavit stating that Bhatt was present at the meeting called by the CM.

There is another side to the story. The Gujarat government has also rewarded some IPS officers. And these are officers who have spent time in jail—the infamous Abhay Chudasama and G.L. Singhal. Chudasama was one of the main accused in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case; Singhal was an accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Chudasama had spent four years in jail; Singhal, a little more than one year. Both had been granted regular bail this year. The government was quick to withdraw their suspension and reinstate them. This could give them the leeway to influence the prosecution of the charges they face. It was for this very reason the SC had shifted the Sohrabuddin case out of Gujarat and debarred home minister Amit Shah from Gujarat. Probed by the CBI, the Ishrat Jahan case is on in Ahme­dabad, the Sohrabuddin case in Mumbai.

News has also come of another set of officers from Gujarat being rewarded for working to the needs of their political bosses when Narendra Modi was chief minister. After Modi’s taking charge as prime minister, they are being brought to Delhi to do duty at the Centre. Among them are Rakesh Asthana, an IPS officer of the 1984 batch, presently posted as police commissioner of Surat; and A.K. Sharma, a joint comissioner (crime branch) in the Ahmedabad city police. Asthana has been cleared by the Union home ministry for the post of joint director in the CBI. Sharma is said to be in the reckoning for another key position.