Rajasthan ACB loses its ‘biggest hero’ to cancer
Inspector Vikram Singh was diagnosed with cancer in June this year. He was posted to ACB around 8 years ago after getting a job with Rajasthan Police in 2002.
Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has condoled the death of an officer of the state anti-corruption bureau (ACB) who succumbed to cancer on Tuesday.
Inspector Vikram Singh, 43, was being diagnosed with cancer in June this year.
While Gehlot took to Twitter to express his condolence, ACB inspector general of police Dinesh MN wrote an emotional post on Facebok, saying “ACB Rajasthan loses its biggest hero”.
Singh was given a job with Rajasthan Police on compassionate grounds in January 2002 after his father, Shiv Pal Singh, died on duty at Bagar police station in Jhunjhunu district. He was the fourth police officer from his family.
Posted in ACB around 8 years ago, he soon drew appreciation from his senior officers for his dogged pursuit in exposing corruption.
According to Dinesh MN’s post, “In ACB, as head of technical surveillance unit of ACB, Singh was instrumental in exposing some of the biggest scams in the state, which led to arrest of senior officers of administration, police and judiciary.
ACB Operations in Mining, NRHM, Ajmer Police & Judiciary, Kota Police, Narcotics, PHED and other departments which led to arrest of some of the highest level officers had Vikram listening to thousands of calls and sifting through hundreds of CDRs (call detail records).”
“He lived ACB, breathed ACB and even in his dreams, only Operations, numbers, surveillance, demand, delivery, arrest, search seizure haunted him,” said the ACB IG.
When Singh was put on ventilator in Jaipur’s Narayana Multispecialty Hospital in September first week after one round of treatment in Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital, all top Rajasthan Police officers, including DGP Bhupendra Singh and ACB chief Alok Tripathi, visited him.
Everyone who worked in the ACB remembered Vikram Singh for his doggedness in exposing the corrupt, working long hours at ACB headquarters juggling with phone numbers, technical surveillance and in anticipation of when a deal of corruption would fructify.
ACB DG Alok Tripathi said when he visited him in hospital, Singh mumbled to him: “I want to return to work soon—there’s so much left to solve.”
“We were sure that he would have some plan to deceive the disease and his sheer will to live and his doggedness made us believe that he would defeat the disease. That was the confidence we had in him, we believed he could do anything,” Dinesh MN said.
One of Singh’s friends recalled him saying, “I knew I would die by bullet some day but never thought that this disease will grip me.”
Dinesh MN called him “not just a colleague but a dear brother who guided me in my first important posting as IG ACB in 2015”. The IPS officer, who was in jail for seven years in an encounter case, said Vikram guided him in the mining operation, one of the most prestigious cases of Rajasthan ACB.
“Vikram you will inspire us every day but we will always miss you,” the officer wrote in his FB post.
Singh is survived by wife and 10-year-old son, Shaurya. His body was taken to his native village, Khudi, in Sikar district for cremation early Wednesday morning.
