Rajendra Kumar—Angst of an IAS officer seeking VRS

Rarely, if ever, has a letter seeking Voluntary Retirement from Service been so long. It extends to over 7,000 words. And it is doubtful if the Chief Secretary of Delhi to whom it has been addressed would read through the long missive.

But former Delhi Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar’s letter does make for compelling reading, if only because this is possibly the first time an IAS officer has publicly accused the Government and its agencies of hounding people and pursuing its own agenda by flouting established rules.

To put things in perspective, the 1989 batch IAS officer of AGMUT cadre was arrested in July last year in a corruption case. And the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge sheet against the officer on December 3, 2016 but without the sanction for prosecution. On two later dates also, on December 9 and 16, it is learnt, the agency failed to produce the sanction before the court.

The officer has denied all charges against him and claimed that the CBI wanted him to implicate the chief minister if he wanted to be let off. While a CBI spokesman has rubbished the claim, pointing out that the case dated back to a period when Sheila Dikshit was the CM, Rajendra Kumar points out that the CBI had taken away files from 2015 also from the present CM Arvind Kejriwal’s office.

In his letter Kumar writes, “Even from the CBI’s own admissions in court, investigation in corruption cases are document-based. The CBI intensively looked in all the bank accounts of mine, my wife and even my children. They visited my mother’s house at Patna. They took me to open my locker, where they found nothing. They intensively interrogated hundreds of persons after registration of FIR. Even after their extraordinary effort, when they could not find anything substantial, despite using third degree methods on many persons, they almost stopped calling people after March 2016,” writes Kumar.

“I must mention here that hundreds of people have been called without issuing notice, which itself is illegal. An examination of reception entries and CCTV cameras at CBI reception and matching them with formal interrogation reports, which the CBI has shown on its record, would bring out this huge criminal illegality of CBI. They have forcibly taken email accounts of many of the accused without bringing it on record and without any order from the court, which is an offence under the Information Technology Act,” he goes on to add.

Kumar was arrested on July 4, 2016, seven months after the CBI registered an FIR on the basis of ‘oral information’ received.

“As I was arrested for more than 48 hours, I was placed under suspension on 6th July 2016. My suspension for three months was to end on 2nd October 2016. There is a Supreme Court judgement guiding the course of action in such cases. Supreme Court of India in its order dated 16th February 2015 in the matter of “Ajay Kumar Choudhary versus Union of India”, ordered the following:

“We, therefore, direct that the currency of a Suspension Order should not extend beyond three months if within this period the Memorandum of Charges/Chargesheet is not served on the delinquent officer/employee; if the Memorandum of Charges/Chargesheet is served a reasoned order must be passed for the extension of the suspension.”

In compliance with the above mentioned Supreme Court order, the Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India, had issued an Office Memorandum on 23rd August 2016, specifically stating that

“it has been decided that where a Government servant is placed under suspension, the order of suspension should not extend beyond three months, if within this period the charge-sheet is not served to the charged officer.”

“Still, the Government, in clear violation of Supreme Court judgement, which is the law of the land; and its own office memorandum, illegally extended my suspension for another 180 days on 2nd October 2016.”

“What could be reason for this? Who is to be held responsible for this illegality? Who is going to compensate me for this harassment?” he goes on to write.