AHMEDABAD: As additional police commissioner of Ahmedabad police in 1992, O P Mathur comes out in CBI’s records as an officer who was running with the hare and hunting with the hound.

The present commissioner of Ahmedabad police, Mathur was then the head of the ‘Latif Squad’ which was created within the police to nab mafia don Abdul Latif. However, documents in the Rauf Valiullah murder case, which was probed by the CBI, expose his suspected links with the mafia don.

After the Radhika Gymkhana murders, in which the Latif gang gunned down nine persons belonging to a rival gang in August 1992, Mathur was chosen to head the ‘Latif Squad’ with officers like Geetha Johri, A K Surolia, Siddhrajsinh Bhati and A K Jadeja to assist him.

The gymkhana murders in Odhav on the eastern outskirts of Ahmedabad were sensational because for the first time in Gujarat an AK-47 was used to mow down such a large number of members of the Hansraj Dwivedi gang of bootleggers who were challenging Latif’s supremacy in the illicit liquor trade.

As addl. CP, Mathur was in charge of the entire eastern belt of the city, including Dariapur, which was Latif’s stronghold. The documents, especially the statement of Abdul Khurdush, the right-hand man of Latif, who is still in Sabarmati jail, show how the entire police force was on the payroll of the Latif gang.

While Khurdush has spoken about Latif’s close links with Mathur, and that it was Mathur who had allegedly told Latif about Valiullah being a thorn in his side, Khurdush also gave CBI a detailed list of the regular payments being made by Latif to various police officers serving in Ahmedabad at that time to allow the gang to conduct its liquor business freely.

While Mathur may thank his stars that his name is not clearly identified as a recipient of Latif’s largesse, despite his jurisdication completely overlapping the Latif territory, the CBI has put it on record on the basis of Khurdush’s statement that “The 2-3 addl. CPs in Ahmedabad used to receive a ‘hafta’ ranging from Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per month.”

These allegations, contained in CBI documents presented before courts, were never probed by successive regimes and now that these facts have faded out of collective memory, the government of the day does not bother checking the dark pasts of officers before rewarding them with plum postings.

Source: timesofindia