Dilli Ka Babu: Corruption dilemma

Former IPS officer Mayank Jain has put the Madhya Pradesh and Central governments in a peculiar dilemma.

Five years after he was suspended following raids by the Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta special police establishment officials in a disproportionate assets case, the corruption watchdog has concluded that there is “insufficient evidence” to prosecute him and filed a closure case. However, even without waiting for the conclusion of the Lokayukta case, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) had compulsorily retired the 1995-batch officer in August last year.

The Lokayukta’s report has put the authorities in a fix since the officer will have to be restored to his post after the allegations against him fell through.

Oddly, sources say, Mr Jain is averse to returning to the police service after being forcibly retired. Apparently, he is a qualified orthopaedic surgeon and considers his stint in the IPS as a closed chapter.

Destination China
The government will post customs intelligence officers in China in its effort to check black money, trade-based money laundering and other financial frauds after several such incidents have come to knowledge.

Sources say the finance ministry has initiated the process to select officers for two posts of the customs overseas intelligence network (Coin) in the Indian Embassy in Beijing and in the consulate general of India at Guangzhou.

The move was begun by the directorate of revenue intelligence (DRI) to curtail incidents of trade-based money laundering and other financial frauds originating from China.

Coin officers are usually mandated to pass on intelligence or information gathered from their respective positing stations overseas to help Indian intelligence agencies, mainly DRI, check trade-related frauds.

In the past, customs authorities in India have detected a few cases of smuggling to and from China. Coin officers have been posted in several countries, including Nepal, Singapore, Brussels, the US and the UK, to help Indian authorities check smuggling, sources say.

The selection process involves concurrence by the ministry of external affairs and final approval by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-headed appointments committee of the Cabinet, they said.

A high-level committee comprising the chairperson, two members of the central board of indirect taxes and customs (CBIC) and the director general of DRI will interview the officers.

The CBIC will then recommend a panel of three officers for each post to the finance minister before it is forwarded to the ministry of external affairs for its concurrence followed by reference to the appointments committee of the Cabinet for final approval.

Targeting opponents
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) finds itself in a bind.

It has cracked a case of alleged bribery by officials of the naval dockyard in Vishakhapatnam. But it cannot go ahead and arrest the accused as the Andhra Pradesh government has withdrawn its consent to the CBI to operate in the state.

Since he broke off with the NDA government last year, chief minister Chandrababu Naidu had been alleging that the Centre was misusing agencies like the CBI to target political opponents.