New Delhi: Former CBI director Ranjit Sinha lost his battle to COVID-19 on Friday morning at his residence. A Bihar code IPS officer of the 1974 batch he presided as the CBI chief in 2014, the year when Narendra Modi took over the PMO.
Prior to his designation as a CBI chief, Mr. Sinha headed two security forces-the Railway Protection Force and Indo-Tibetan Border Police in 2012 and also served at senior positions in the CBI in Patna and Delhi.
From Naxal attacks to international border tensions, Mr. Sinha gained a huge reputation due to his adept handling of law and order. His career highlights include the terrorism attack in J&K in the 2000s, stint operation with RPF (Nov 2008-May 2011). He also headed the Srinagar-Muzaffargarh bus service operation in 2005.
The low-profile IPS officers’ first brush with controversy came in 1996, where he was accused of scuttling investigations into the fodder scam to shield Lalu Prasad Yadav. Later he was investigated for allegedly misusing his power to stymie an inquiry into a corruption case involving bribe-giving in the allocation of coal fields to private firms, the chicanery was executed when Manmohan Singh was in power.
In 2017, the CBI registered a case against its own former chief to investigate his alleged meetings at home with the accused in coal scam cases.
It was during his initial days as a Chief that the Supreme Court dubbed CBI as “a caged parrot that speaks in his masters’ voice.”