IAS officer Rajendra Kumar’s letter seeking VRS—Part IV

I know that the government is all powerful and when it comes to misusing and abusing its power, it can go to any extent. There are people who exercise statutory authority and are required to exercise such authority within the boundaries of law. However, when they become scared and subservient to the Government rather than the law, they do not object to such illegalities.

However, a time will come when each one of these statutory authorities will have to answer the questions regarding their illegal acts, and will have to face the due process of law for having done so.

In my case, it has been alleged that I have given contracts worth Rs 9.5 crores without following the due process. The CBI has not been able to even allege that a single paisa has come to me.

During interrogation, I was repeatedly told that I would be let free if I implicate Chief Minister of Delhi. Maybe this was the reason for the CBI to go to such extraordinary length. Not only this, the Central Bureau of Investigation, just to force people to implicate me and the Chief Minister of Delhi, has beaten up dozens of people, and some of them sustained permanent major injuries.

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. 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 account 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.

In the meantime, after the registration of FIR and searches at my home and CM office, I continued working as the Principal Secretary to CM, where implementation of some very important public projects was being monitored. I was intensively involved in this monitoring. Many of these projects had the capacity to further swing the public opinion in favour of ruling party in Delhi.

The “Government” yet again could not have tolerated it. I was arrested on 4th of July 2016, after seven months of registration of FIR. As I mentioned earlier, the investigations had almost stopped by March 2016. The stated reasons and the real purpose of arrest were poles apart. During my CBI custody, The DIG of Anti-Corruption Bureau misbehaved with me and showered me with choicest abuses. Of course, many of my co-accused were beaten up during CBI custody as well.

Suspension and After

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.

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? Justice may be delayed, but it shall be delivered one day.

Income Tax Notices

Not being satisfied with three criminal cases in last one and half year, quite a few number of Income Tax notices have been slapped on me just to mentally harassed me. The latest notice of the Income Tax Department directed me to submit the documents related to my own CBI case, which Income Tax authorities should have obtained directly from the CBI.

They ought to have scrutinised such papers first before going ahead with issue of notice to me. Not only they failed to get such papers from the CBI, they forced me to give papers like copy of FIR and seizure report, just to harass me. It was definitely not a case of Income Tax assessment; it was rather a part of the series of action taken by the Income Tax Authorities on directions from the Government to undertake such assessments with a view to break me down. Otherwise, these many notices would not have been issued to me.

Even if I assume that the last Income Tax notice was sent to me in routine course, the Income Tax Authorities have gone to extraordinary length to somehow attempt and create additional tax demand against me by calling a large number of persons, who had no financial transaction with me ever. This included the co-accused(s) in my CBI case. Only God and Income Tax authorities know how many more persons they had called to give evidence against me. Never was I given any opportunity to cross-examine these witnesses or to refute their statement. All this had been done beyond the provisions of Income Tax law with the malafide intent to create an illegal demand of tax against me.

Even in the issue of release of subsistence allowance to me, which should have been a routine affair, as every government officer gets his salary by the end of the month or during the first week of month, my subsistence allowance for the months of July, August and September of this year was released to me in October and for the months of October and November, the subsistence allowance has still not been released by the Government to me.

How low can the Government stoop?

Never in my life I thought that the Government can stoop so low, once it decides to hound an officer. I have a house with the Civil Service Officers Welfare Society, located at Greater Noida. This Civil Service Officers working with Government of Delhi are its members.

My house was rented by a simple academic family for last three years till February, 2016. In the garb of investigation, the CBI officers went there and threatened my tenant. Due to the threat, the poor fellow vacated my house within a week, even before our contractual period was over. He must have gone through real difficult times finding and shifting to a new house in a week. My house is vacant since then. When prospective tenants know about this, they simply refuse to even discuss further. The Government has been successful in trying to squeeze me monetarily. None of the means to harass me is mean enough for the Government.

Concluded.

Read Part I of the letter here, Part II here and Part III here.