Shimla, March 25 -- Zahur Haider Zaidi, a 1994-batch officer, has been appointed as inspector general of police (IGP) at the Police Academy Training & Research, Shimla. This comes around three months after his life sentence, in a custodial death case, was suspended by the Punjab and Haryana high court. Zaidi, after getting relief from the HC, had on March 11 joined at the police headquarters, and was awaiting posting. The case came to light in 2017, after one of the suspects in Gudiya gang rape and murder case--Suraj-- died in police custody during the investigation. Zaidi was an IG rank officials at that time. In January 2025, the CBI court of then special judge Alka Malik had sentenced Zaidi along with seven other police officers to life imprisonment for the custodial death. The case was transferred to Chandigarh on high court orders. However, while pronouncing its verdict on the case, the HC bench of justice Anoop Chitkara and justice Sukhvinder Kaur noted a lack of motive and the accused officer not being present in police station at the time of the custodial death of Suraj Singh, as pointed out by the IGP in his appeal seeking suspension of his sentence. The state government has also transferred three other IPS officers in the orders issued on Tuesday. The 2012 batch IPS officer, Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi, who was awaiting posting in the department of personnel, has been posted as deputy inspector general of police, traffic, tourist and railways, Shimla in place of Gurdev Chand Sharma. Sharma, however, will now serve as deputy inspector general of police (law & order), Shimla. A 2019 batch IPS officer, Amit Yadav, who was also awaiting posting, has been appointed as Commandant of the 2nd Indian Reserve Battalion at Sakoh in Kangra district. He replaces Ashok Ratan, superintendent of police, Kangra, who was holding the additional charge....