BENGALURU: A police officer of the rank of DySP, after trying to approach the state police chief several times regarding grievances has penned a long letter to the DG and IGP of Karnataka Neelamani N Raju and marked a copy to the grievance cell. A copy of the letter, written on June 18, without the officers name was leaked on Saturday. In the letter, one of many, the officer has raised several issues about morale, intentional harassment and being made to work without even one day's leave. The officer is now desperately trying to meet the state police chief to make his case in person.
The officer, who remains unknown for now, in his letter, starts by saying, "I am again requesting you, I am fed up over mental harassment and discrimination by senior officers which is continuing and so far there has been no solution from your office." The officer says that he had come to meet Raju in her office but was denied permission to meet her. "I then asked about the status of my earlier letters to you and your staff told me that you are unable to read Kannada and that you would not be able to understand the points that I had made. I was told to go to the grievance cell," the letter says.
Faced with such a situation, the DySP has told Raju that he had no other avenues to explore as the DG of the state was responsible for taking up the kind of problems that he was facing. "With this lack of seriousness by the department in dealing with problems, many officers turn to suicide like DySP's Kallapa Handibag and MK Ganapathi and others like Anupama Shenoy choose to leave the profession entirely," the officer said and goes on to say that the reputation of the department has been tarnished with this indifference. Citing an incident in 2013 in which a constable from Rajankunte police station had opened fire on an officer, the DySP says that harassment within the department was responsible for such extreme action.
The officer once again goes on to list his problems and says that he had asked for leave to drop his 12-year-old daughter to a camp. The leave request was made 9 days before the date in front of a senior officer but no decision was communicated to him. "I still took one days emergency leave to take her but the action was taken against me for dereliction of duty and a notice was issued," the letter said. At the same time, a colleague of his was able to take leave without prior intimation or permission but no action was taken against him, the officer said.
According to the letter, the officer had written his first letter on December 29, 2017, to the ADGP grievance cell. He followed this up with another letter to DGP Internal Security on 30 December 2017 and on 4th June 2018, he wrote to DG and IGP Neelamani N Raju and the latest letter on 18 June that has now been leaked.