Sinha headed the CBI when the agency investigated the Gujarat fake encounter cases among other key cases in the period

New Delhi, April 16

Former Director of CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) Ranjit Singh passed away on Friday. He was Covid positive.

A Bihar cadre IPS (Indian Police Service) officer of the 1974 batch, Ranjit Sinha was 68.

Sinha headed the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force, the Railway Protection Force and served at senior positions in the Central Bureau of Investigation in Patna and Delhi before his appointment as CBI chief in 2012 when the CBI was investigating the Gujarat encounter case investigations. 

Sinha was in charge of the CBI in 2013, when the Supreme Court famously described the agency as a "caged parrot that speaks in its master's voice".

The CBI for the first time in its history had registered a case against its own former chief in 2017 to investigate his alleged meetings at home with the accused in coal scam cases.

When he was heading the CBI,  he had grabbed attention when he refused to accept a closure report in the disproportionate wealth case against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and ordered a reinvestigation that eventually resulted in closure.