Bihar IG arrested from Patna by Andhra police in 5-year-old case

Patna: An IG rank IPS officer in Bihar was on Monday arrested here by a police team from Andhra Pradesh in a five-year-old case, only to be set free by a local court, which declined to grant transit remand to the visiting force that had no warrant.

According to senior advocate Amit Srivastava, the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate in Patna before whom IG Sunil Kumar Nayak was produced, “also ordered that no action be taken against the officer by the Andhra Pradesh police for the next 30 days”.

Nayak, who is the IG, Fire and Home Guards, was taken into custody from his residence early in the morning amid high drama. Several Home Guards personnel created a ruckus and relented only after being pacified by Bhanu Pratap Singh, the Patna (West) SP, who arrived with his own team.

“The Andhra Pradesh police called us at around 6.40 am, informing us about the problems they were facing upon the arrest of the IG forty minutes earlier. Although not giving prior information to the local police was a procedural lapse on their part, we chose to cooperate with them,” said Singh.

Advocate Srivastava, who received a call from the IG, claimed that the visiting police team had entered the house “clambering across the boundary wall, clearly demonstrating their mala fide intentions”.

“The team headed by an SP rank investigating officer threw a tantrum when we told them that they could not take away my client without obtaining a transit remand from a court here,” he said.

Singh told reporters that the court refused to grant transit remand, noting that the visiting police team was neither armed with a proper arrest warrant nor did it produce the case diary.

The case, in which Nayak’s arrest was sought, was filed in 2024 by Raghu Rama Krishna Raju, who belongs to the YSR Congress of former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy, but has been appointed Deputy Speaker of the assembly by the current TDP-led government headed by Chandrababu Naidu.

Raju, who is a vehement critic of Reddy, had been arrested in 2021 by the Andhra Pradesh CID in a

sedition case. Nayak was then posted in the southern state as DIG(CID) on an inter-cadre deputation.