Lande was holding the post of SP (Traffic) too. No replacement was made for him. A couple of days after his departure Patna was divided into two, instead of three police districts. Police stations of Patna Central were transferred between SPs of Patna West and Patna East.
On January 3 the state government transferred the SP of Patna West, Upendra Kumar Sharma, too. He was sent to Maoists affected Jamui district. Now Patna has just one SP and that is Ms Kim of Patna East. Sharma too was looking after SP (Traffic) after the exit of Lande in November last. Now both the posts are lying vacant.
That is not enough. Another very important post is lying vacant. It is of DIG (Central Range). After Vineet Vinayak was sent to his parent cadre, Sikkim, on December 13 last year there is no DIG (Central Range) for the last three weeks. Apart from Patna the home district of chief minister Nitish Kumar, Nalanda, comes under Central Range.
Is it that there is no need for the post of DIG and SPs as both Patna and Nalanda have been cleared of criminals?
No. The ground reality suggests something else. All this exercise was undertaken to cut Shivdeep Lande to size as he was troubling some bigwigs close to ruling Janata Dal (United) and BJP after he was posted as SP of Patna last year February. On August 2 last the state government appointed two more SPs in Patna and it was trifurcated into three. Lande was left with the command of Patna Central. But since he continued to call shots all over the Patna urban district––as he used to do before August 2––the state government finally shifted him out to Araria. There were reports of rift between him and SSP, Alok Kumar, who too was dwarfed by him.
The official stand at the time of trifurcation of Patna was simple. It was argued that with 3,880 pending cases till last year, Patna needed more than one SP. On an average one district has around 600 pending cases.
Police department sources said that on an average around 350 specially reported (SR) cases were reported each month in Patna, which require an IPS officers’ attention. The average figure of SR cases in other districts stands between 50 and 60.
But if it was so important to post new SPs in Patna in August than why are the posts kept vacant and one officer after another being sent outside the state capital. Sources within said the real reason for trifurcation of the district was to clip the wings of Lande. As it was not prudent to transfer him within six months the state government appointed three SPs. But when he refused to be clipped and continued to function outside the state government finally sent him to much smaller district far away from the state capital––once called Kala Paani. That was certainly not a reward for the young IPS officer.

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