Former CBI chief Ranjit Sinha passes away, a day after testing positive for Covid-19

New Delhi, Apr 16: Former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Ranjit Sinha passed away on Friday morning in Delhi, news agency ANI reported. He was 68. His COVID19 report had come yesterday and had tested positive for the disease.

Sinha was an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the 1974 batch. He had served as the director of the CBI from December 2012 to December 2014.

He was the Director General of Police of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Director General of the Railway Protection Force before joining as the CBI Director in December 2012 for a two-year tenure.

He has also served in senior positions in the CBI in Patna and Delhi.

He has also worked in Central Reserve Police Force as IG (Operations) in Srinagar and IG (Personnel) in Delhi. Sinha had earlier held important positions in CBI including the post of Joint Director and Deputy Inspector General.

He has been associated with the investigations of a number of sensitive and important cases of national and international ramification. He was selected based on the procedure laid down by CVC Act 2003 and had a tenure of two years. He was selected by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.

Ranjit had to co-ordinate between different anti corruption bureaus, Income Tax Department and the CVC in fighting corruption with the main responsibility of administering the CBI. When his appointment was announced, the Bharatiya Janata Party had questioned the manner in which the 1974 batch IPS officer was appointed to head the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by the Congress-led government Sinha was born in Jamshedpur and trained to be a geologist from the Patna University but joined the Bihar cadre of the Indian Police Service (IPS) when he was 21 years old.

He is married to Reena, daughter of an IPS officer, Gajendra Narain. He has one daughter and one son. The daughter is married to an IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre, the son is pursuing career in law abroad.