Ahmedabad: What should have been a definitive record of sacrifice is instead riddled with errors. Ahmedabad city police’s lists of “martyrs” and “corona warriors” contain factual mistakes, missing details and disputed classifications, raising concerns about the force’s handling of its own institutional history.TOI’s examination of the Ahmedabad police commissioner’s portal lists 10 personnel as martyrs. Detailed information, however, is available only about three. The other seven names are accompanied only by their rank, police station and date of death, with no explanation of how or why they were declared martyrs.The most glaring misses are details on traffic constables Dharmendrasinh Parmar and Jaswantsinh Chauhan. The two were killed on July 20, 2023, after a speeding SUV driven by Tathya Patel rammed into them on Iskcon flyover while they were attending to an earlier accident. Despite the high-profile case, the portal does not mention the circumstances of their deaths.Another major discrepancy concerns constable Chandrakant Makwana of the Detection of Crime Branch. Official records show that he died after being attacked with an iron rod while investigating a narcotics suspect during a field inquiry.However, according to the case details, the incident occurred inside the Anti-Organised Crime Squad office at the Crime Branch headquarters in Gaekwad Haveli. Makwana was allegedly killed by accused Manish Balai inside the police premises, after which the accused escaped from the highly secured Crime Branch building. The absence of CCTV footage and the escape had triggered widespread controversy and embarrassment for city police.The inconsistencies are not limited to the martyrs’ list. The portal’s list of 23 “corona warriors” includes Vinay Yadav, whose recorded date of death is Nov 8, 2007 — nearly 13 years before the Covid-19 pandemic.
