Thirty-five years after the event, an FIR has been registered at Maharajpur police station in Kanpur against 12 retired police personnel in connection with an alleged fake encounter in 1991, following a CB-CID inquiry that found the encounter was fabricated and the evidence against 12 arrested men was false. The FIR was lodged on the complaint of CB-CID Inspector Sushil Kumar, and Police Commissioner Raghubir Lal confirmed it includes charges under IPC sections 194, 195, 182, 211, 218, 220, 323 and 342 — provisions covering offences including fabricating evidence and wrongful confinement. The investigation is being handled by the CB-CID, and all allegations are yet to be tested in court.

The inquiry had initially identified 18 police personnel involved in the 1991 incident, including the then station officer Vidyasagar Tripathi and investigating officer Ramesh Chandra Bhatole; six of them have since died, the Commissioner noted. Among those named in the FIR are sub-inspectors B. D. Saraswat, Yogendra Nath Singh and Ramesh Chandra, head constable Hriday Narayan Tiwari, and several constables and a driver, as reported.

According to the original police account, on the night of August 22–23, 1991, police received information that armed men were planning to rob vehicles near Narval turn on GT Road, where the road had allegedly been blocked with babul-tree branches at around 12.30 a.m. An encounter was said to have followed, in which 12 men, including Rakesh Pathak, were arrested and firearms and explosives were shown as recovered. The CB-CID inquiry contradicted that narrative: witnesses Umashankar Pasi and Vijendra Singh, the driver and cleaner of a DCM vehicle, told investigators the men were taken into custody without any robbery attempt, and alleged that the weapons recovery was staged and the arrested men were assaulted. Other reporting on the inquiry says the men were allegedly picked up from their homes and licensed family firearms were shown as the recovered weapons.

The inquiry followed a complaint by Deo Prasad Pathak, Rakesh Pathak's elder brother, who alleged that station officer Tripathi had demanded a 400-square-yard plot of land from the family without compensation and, on being refused, retaliated by implicating Rakesh and the others — an allegation recorded in the inquiry reporting. Deo Prasad sought a CB-CID probe after securing his brother's bail from the High Court. The CB-CID's inquiry report was approved by its Lucknow headquarters on September 25, 1995. Rakesh Pathak later died in a road accident in Kanpur on May 8, 2003. The case has renewed questions about police accountability and how such decades-old allegations are pursued.