Chander Prakash

Chander Prakash, called Dr Chander Prakash in the Nanavati report, was the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in charge of Delhi's South District in November 1984. The district had 14 police stations in four sub-divisions: Delhi Cantonment, Hauz Khas, Lajpat Nagar and Defence Colony. The Kusum Lata Mittal report counts over 450 deaths in it, and the Ahuja Committee counted 341 Sikhs killed in the Delhi Cantonment area alone. This page sets out what two official inquiries recorded about him, each attributed to its author.

Key moments

• 1 November 1984: Sub-Inspector Ramesh Singh Rana, in charge of the Sagarpur area, told both inquiries that the DCP told him to keep restraint and not to use firearms. He said he reported 77 deaths in Sagarpur but was told not to disclose so high a number, while the DCP had reported about 20 to headquarters (Nanavati report, pp. 63 and 164; Mittal report, paras 7.115 to 7.116).
• 1 November 1984: Additional Commissioner Gautam Kaul caught looters at New Friends Colony and handed them to the DCP. The Nanavati Commission records that no arrest of them is shown, that they appear to have been let off by Chander Prakash, and that the DCP's log book “also appears to have been tampered with” (p. 73).
• August 1988: the Mittal report says he gave different casualty figures and “deliberately tried to conceal the gravity of the situation” (para 7.121). Kusum Lata Mittal wrote that officers like Chander Prakash “have no place in a disciplined force” and asked the Government to consider dealing with him under Article 311(2)(b) of the Constitution (para 7.132). She records that he obtained a stay of the departmental inquiry against him (para 7.130).
• 9 February 2005: the Nanavati Commission, which had sent him a Section 8B notice, signs its report. He had replied that an inquiry officer had exonerated him and that he had challenged the Government's disagreement with that finding in the Delhi High Court (Civil Writ Petition 641 of 1998); the commission held the petition no bar to its inquiry (pp. 157 to 158). The Nanavati Commission found that the South District officers it named “did not perform their duties properly”, and recommended that the Government “consider even now if any action can be taken against them” (pp. 158 and 164).
• August 2005: the Government's Action Taken Report said he had retired on 30 November 2001 and that there were legal difficulties in starting departmental proceedings (Outlook, 9 August 2005). The Nanavati report notes that the final order in a departmental inquiry could not be served on him because of a restraint order from the Delhi High Court (p. 7).

What he is remembered for: as the senior police officer of a district where the Mittal report counts over 450 Sikhs dead, and for the gap between its call to dismiss him and the outcome on record: a stay, a writ petition and retirement in 2001.