Damayanti Sen

Calcutta, Aug. 12: Damayanti Sen, the deputy-inspector general (Darjeeling range), was today transferred as DIG, CID, in a move that is being seen as her return to the “mainstream of policing” after being shunted out of Calcutta following the Park Street rape probe.

Last year, Sen, who was then the Calcutta detective chief, was transferred for admitting that a woman was raped in the February 2012 Park Street incident, which chief minister Mamata Banerjee had described as a “sajano ghatana (stage-managed incident).”

Sen was shifted to the less important DIG (training), which was seen as a punishment transfer.

She was sent to the hills in February this year.

Home department sources said the chief minister herself “took care” to ensure that Sen was brought back to Calcutta.

“This completes the cycle. It is clear that Sen is back to the mainstream of policing. How else can one explain her shift from Darjeeling at a time the hills are on the boil. The transfer was the result of direct intervention from the top,” a senior home department official said.

The official said the state could have made “an exception” in Sen’s case. “The government has not named any replacement for Sen in Darjeeling. This is an indication that an exception was made in her case,” he said.

Sources said the “ice” between Sen, a 1996-batch IPS officer who became the first lady officer to lead the city crime department, and Mamata began to “melt” during the chief minister’s visit to north Bengal earlier this year.

“Soon after the chief minister returned, she expressed her willingness to post Sen outside Darjeeling. Sen had then completed only a few months in her new assignment,” a senior bureaucrat said.

Sen, who had apparently requested that she be brought back to Calcutta citing “personal reasons”, was initially offered a post in the city police. Sources said she was “unwilling” to join a force from where she was shifted “disgracefully”.

The government had also considered offering her the post of commissioner in either of the commissionerates of Barrackpore and Bidhannagar.

Besides Sen, the government today issued the transfer orders of 27 other IPS officers.

CID inspector-general Vineet Goyal has been made the chief of the Asansol commissionerate. Jag Mohan has replaced Goyal. Neeraj Singh has been posted as IG, CID-II.

Rajeev Misra will replace Jawed Shamim, who has been sent to the hills as special IG (Jalpaiguri range). Shamim has been given additional charge of Darjeeling. Misra will be joint commissioner (headquarters) of Calcutta police.