Rajnish Rai. Picture by Yogesh Chawda

Ahmedabad, April 27: The star police officer who arrested D.G. Vanzara, the Sohrabuddin fake-encounter accused, has himself fallen from grace.

Deputy inspector-general Rajnish Rai was allegedly caught cheating in his LLB first-year examination on Friday, Gujarat University has confirmed two days after the incident.

Rai, who heads the crime records bureau, however, claims he was framed because he busted fellow DIG Vanzara, Gujarat police’s “encounter specialist” and Narendra Modi’s blue-eyed boy.

Gujarat University pro-vice-chancellor N.K. Patel said Rai was caught not by the invigilators at the exam centre — Siddharth Law College in Gandhinagar — but by a university team carrying out “surprise checks”.

The team found answers scribbled on Rai’s foot rule, Patel added.

But the pro-VC could not answer why the university officials did not seize the foot rule as evidence, nor why the officer was allowed to complete his paper.

Rai, a 1992-batch IPS officer in his late 30s with a reputation for courage, said he was framed after arguing with a member of the GU team.

He said the official appeared to have caught a girl examinee cheating and began shouting at her.

Rai, sitting just behind her, objected saying he could not concentrate on his paper because of the din.

The official, who didn’t recognise the DIG, rudely asked him to keep quiet.

“I’m a responsible officer,” the man said, to which Rai replied: “I’m a responsible officer, too.”

Rai believes that the moment he revealed his identity, his fate was sealed. The GU brass is widely seen as being close to the ruling BJP.

The GU official checked Rai’s accessories and zeroed in on the foot rule.

The officer was asked to leave the centre but when he refused, he was allowed to write his paper.

On Saturday, pro-VC Patel and other university officials visited Siddharth Law College and asked the principal, M.S. Gharekhan, to give his and other officials’ statements in a sealed envelope. Gharekhan had arrived at the scene after Rai was accused of cheating.

“The envelopes will be opened by the inquiry committee,” Patel said. He added that nine others were caught cheating at the centre, but added that Rai had become a “special case”.

“If found guilty, he may be declared ‘failed’ in the subject but allowed to appear in the exam next year. But if the maximum punishment is handed out, he will not be allowed to write the exam for three years,” Patel said.

If the GU probe nails Rai, the state government can take disciplinary action against him, local advocate Yatin Ojha said.

Rai is the first Gujarat IPS officer to have completed an IIM executive programme, which he did in Bangalore.

He hit the headlines in April 2007 when he arrested Vanzara and two other officers for allegedly plotting the November 2005 murders of gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi.

Rai also raided state minister Purushottam Solanki’s home without government permission, and arrested leading Ahmedabad builder Amrut Patel in a murder case despite BJP pressure to go slow. Amrut is in Sabarmati jail where Vanzara, too, is lodged.