Khan, after being abused with constant communal overtones, had filed a complaint against Singh. Though the inquiry was launched after a year following the first complaint, after which Chetan Singh was eventually transferred to Bhavnagar in Gujarat.

In 2016, when Singh was posted in the dog squad of RPF, Khan met him as his auto was usually parked near the “maal godaam“(luggage warehouse) of the Ujjain railway station.

“One day, in the middle of 2016, Chetan saw me and asked me my name. There was a viciousness to him but he said nothing at that time. But from then, whenever he saw me, he would get me to take him to far off places for what he called ‘work’. He barely ever paid. Then he started to ask me to pick up things from his house and drop them. Initially, I said nothing, but I began to realize he was targeting me,” HT quoted Khan as saying.

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In early February 2017, when Khan was leaving the railway station to pick up his daughter, Singh jumped into his auto.

“I told him I could not go with him because my daughter was waiting. He started abusing me and calling me a ‘traitor’ and a ‘terrorist’. He was full of hatred and went on a rant. He said Muslims are terrorists and their real place is in jail. It disturbed me, but there was little I could do,” Khan said.

Things took a wrong turn between the two when on February 17, 2017, when a railway guard known to Khan asked him to pick up his spectacles from a shop in the city and drop them off at the railway station.

Khan bought a platform ticket, delivered the glasses, and was on his way out, but then Chetan stopped him and started harassing Khan. “He said my activities were suspicious, and I was roaming around the platform with an ulterior motive. I told him why I was there but he didn’t listen. He dragged me to the RPF station, and asked me to sit there,” Khan said.

Singh even kept abusing him and told him that this was his last day outside of prison. However, Khan, well known with other RPF personnel, called someone he knew who arrived. “Chetan told him that I had entered without a platform ticket – he had torn it up himself when I showed it to him. But his colleague took me to the inspector in charge of Harsh Chauhan’s room, and the inspector told me I could go,” Khan said.

Later on the next day, Singh spotted Khan again and began assaulting him. “He dragged me to an RPF outpost. He kept hitting me and said he would implicate me in a case. Bystanders intervened. I decided I had to take action,” Khan said.

With things going out of hand, Khan filed a complaint that was marked to RPF officials in Ujjain, officials of the Ratlam division of Railways, and other senior officials on 18 February, where he mentioned he was harassed for no other reason but his religion. “In the complaint, I said he called me a terrorist, thrashed me, and threatened to implicate me in a false case.”

After this, Singh stopped harassing Khan, however, to ensure of when he would erupt again, Khan pursued the case and filed an RTI in September 2017 asking for details of action taken on his complaint.

The RPF commandant ordered an inquiry and a team of RPF officials took Khan’s statement. “I was told they took disciplinary action as per RPF rules. They said they sent him to Kerala for training for a year and were then transferring him to Bhavnagar. In any case, I didn’t see him after that,” Khan said.

“CIB was probing the complaint, but Khan used to visit to enquire about the action against Chetan. I counseled him and assured action according to rules,” HT quoted an official as saying.

An RPF sub-inspector said, “Yes, there was a complaint that Chetan Singh had assaulted and abused an auto driver in Ujjain. The victim filed a complaint and CIB probed it. We found that the allegations were true. He also had an altercation with other colleagues and he was transferred. His increment was stopped for six months.”

Updated: 19 Aug 2023, 04:49 PM IST