Mahesh Bhatt Wants To Make A Film On This IPS Officer From Odisha

Bhubaneswar: Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is contemplating a movie on Odisha-born IPS officer Basant Rath.

While wishing the 2000-batch officer of J&K cadre on his birthday, Bhatt on Thursday tweeted: “Someday I wish to make a film on the life of this enigmatic poet/ police officer. Janam din mubarak Basant. People like you are so hard to find.”

So what makes this officer special? Rath had earned the nickname ‘Singham’ during his tenure as IGP, Traffic in Jammu and Kashmir in 2018. No police officer in Kashmir, in recent times, was as warmly received as him. He was mobbed by youths in the valley for selfies and won praises for bringing discipline on congested Srinagar roads. He went after the powerful while managing traffic, which included seizing an Audi car belonging to a senior IPS officer’s son and issuing a challan against a police vehicle, The Wire reported.

Within nine months of taking charge, he, however, was shifted to the Home Guards wing of the police.

Rath had established himself as an uncompromising officer and the decision to transfer him was not received well in the valley.  “I don’t worry about the politically connected. My Bou (mother) always wanted me to be like this,” Basant was then quoted as saying by media.

A maverick poet-cop, Rath was born in 1972 in Odisha and studied Sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

Amid his professional responsibilities and connecting with the people of Kashmir, Rath has now turned counsellor, pitching for reviving the relationships and changing priorities in the post COVID era.