Damayanti Sen recommended for President's award by state

Arunima Ghosh, SNS, Kolkata, 21 June: Ms Damayanti Sen, DIG, CID, who fell under chief minister Mamata Banerjee's wrath two years back over Park Street rape case is among the 58 police officers recommended for President's award by the state government. The medal will be handed over by President Pranab Mukherjee for exceptional performance on Independence Day.

Ms Sen had been shunted to the Barrackpore Police Training School after she went ahead with the investigations into the Park Street rape incident and cracked it despite Miss Banerjee dismissing it as "fabricated". Few months later, she was transferred to Darjeeling for handling the problem in the Hills. It was later in August that she was brought back to Kolkata as DIG, CID.

In January 2014, she was given the charge of probing into Madhyamgram rape case following High Court directive. Soon after, the High Court yet again asked the state government to hand over investigations of the Parui case to Ms Sen. But she refused to accept the responsibility likely to avoid going into any further controversy with the state government.

The situation thus changed with Ms Sen returning into the good books of the chief minister and her name has now been recommended for the award.

The list of names submitted by the state government includes 48 IPS officers under the category of Police Medal for Meritorious Services and 10 under President's Police Medal for Distinguished Services. Ms Sen's name has been listed under the first category. She is the only woman IPS officer to be recommended for the medal. Others include Mr Vijay Kumar, Mr KL Tamta, Mr Sanjiv Bose, Mr Pallab Ghosh and Mr Ajay Nand.

It may be mentioned here that none of the IPS officers from Bengal bagged the medal last year following delay in sending the list. Cautious about not repeating the incident this year, the state government sent the list on 29 May, much ahead of the schedule. The list includes names of the officers who had been recommended for last year but could not receive the medals as well as for 2014.