The role of at least six Gujarat policemen, including retired Additional Director General of Police M K Tandon (in the picture), has come under the scanner of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), in connection with the 2002 riot cases.

According to sources, SIT, entrusted with the task of reinvestigating the 10 most heinous post-Godhra riot cases, is also probing the alleged lapses in the earlier investigation conducted by these policemen.

Apart from Tandon, who was Joint Commissioner of Police (Sector 2, Ahmedabad city) during the riots, the then Naroda police inspectors

K K Mysorewala and V S Gohil, Meghaninagar police inspector K G Ereda, Assistant Commissioner of Police (G division) of that time M T Rana and the then Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone IV), P B Gondlia, are under SIT’s eye.

It was decided to investigate the role of these officers during the riots after the SIT scrutinised their mobile phone records. “These six policemen are being probed for their alleged dereliction of duty and suspected intentional delay in action,” a highly placed source in the SIT said.

Sources said the mobile phone records of the present Gujarat DGP, PC Pande, who was the Ahmedabad city police commissioner during the riots, were also scrutinised. Pande had used a mobile phone with the number 9825048303 at that time. They, however, refused to confirm whether the top cop was also in the SIT’s probe list.

Earlier, in a similar re-probe in 2006, a 10-member inquiry committee comprising senior IPS officers had held 41 state policemen guilty of dereliction of duty during the riots. Retired Gujarat police DGP A K Bhargava had headed this committee, which was set up following directions by the apex court. Of those indicted by the committee, eight were inspectors, 11 sub-inspectors and 22 constables.