Former CBI Governor and Chief Ashwani Kumar was found dead in his Shimla home on Wednesday, Shimla Police Superintendent Mohit Chawla said. He was 69 years old. Police suspect death by suicide, but have not made any formal statement.
Himachal Pradesh Police Chief Sanjay Kundu, who rushed to the scene, said an investigation into the case was underway and a team of forensic experts arrived at the crime scene and gathered evidence.
Police said a note had been found, apparently written by Kumar.
Retired police officer AP Singh, who succeeded Kumar at the CBI, described Kumar’s death as “absolutely shocking.”
“I have worked closely with him as a special director. He was a gentleman. He never lost his temper. I always found him very nice, soft-spoken; he never said a word to anyone out loud, “AP Singh said of his affable predecessor at the CBI.
Kumar, a 1973 officer with the Indian Police Service, headed the Central Bureau of Investigation from August 2008 to November 2010.
Three years later, the Manmohan Singh government appointed him Governor of Nagaland in March 2013, prompting howls of protest from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Kumar was the first head of the IWC to be appointed to a position of governor. A few months later, it was also named Manipur until December 2013.
Ashwani Kumar, however, had to resign from the Nagaland Raj Bhavan weeks after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the 2014 general election and began to oust governors appointed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. . Kumar was one of the first to leave.
It was during his tenure as head of the IWC that the investigative agency arrested the Union Interior Minister Amit Shah in July 2010 in the case of the encounter with Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Shah was then Secretary General of the BJP and a minister in the Gujarat government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The veteran leader of Congress, P Chidambaram, was then the Union Minister of the Interior.
The 22 defendants who faced trial in this case were acquitted in December 2018. In his verdict, the judge called it a politically motivated case designed to implicate political leaders like Shah.
Ashwani Kumar had started as a young IPS officer in Himachal Pradesh, where he was, in 1985, the Shimla District Police Superintendent. It was during this assignment that he was selected into the newly created Special Protection Group responsible for the security of then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
He was with the SPG from 1985 to 1990 in various positions, including deputy director in the Prime Minister’s Office. It was during this tenure that he came into close contact with the Gandhi family.
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