Ahmedabad, Aug. 24: A sub-inspector has been arrested for allegedly tampering with evidence and siding with the accused in a case relating to the March 2002 massacre of 13 people at Kalok town in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district.

Sub-inspector R.J. Patil was arrested last night by senior Indian Police Service officer Neerja Gotru from Rajkot. He had been reinstated and posted there after having been suspended in December last year for his lax investigations in the case.

Women and children were killed near Ambica Society in Kalok town on March 1, 2002, with a minor allegedly being gangraped by a riotous mob led by the accused.

Patil allegedly did not file a proper first information report in the case, clubbed two other riot cases with the Ambica Society incident and tried to shield the accused. But the National Human Rights Commission, acting on complaints by witnesses, intervened in October 2003. It found the probe shoddy and tardy and ordered reinvestigation by an IPS officer.

Gotru was appointed head of a special investigation team after the Supreme Court instructed the Gujarat government to depute an officer to “monitor” certain post-Godhra riot cases. The apex court ordered reinvestigation of some cases and transferred the Best Bakery killings case and the Bilkis Bano gangrape-cum-murder case to Maharashtra for retrial.

The IPS officer was asked to reinvestigate three cases in Kalol taluka, including the Ambica Society massacre, a few days after Patil was suspended.

The sub-inspector had clubbed three incidents into one FIR and did not hand over the victims’ bodies to their relatives after a post-mortem was conducted. Nor did he record the kin’s FIR. Relatives of the victims allege that Patil had the bodies cremated even though he knew all 13 dead were Muslims.

After Gotru, then the Amreli district superintendent, took over as special investigating officer, five policemen and more than 20 others, most of them affiliated to various Sangh parivar outfits, were arrested. Among them is a personal assistant of a former Gujarat minister.

Two deputy superintendents of police have been arrested; two inspectors and a constable are also behind bars.

Mukhtar Ahmed, a Kalol-based human rights activist, says the no-nonsense Gotru resisted political pressure and did an excellent job of nabbing the guilty.