Former Special Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Rajinder Kumar has questioned official lethargy in taking action against bureaucrats, legal officers and police officers who conspired with certain politicians to sabotage India’s national security when the United Progressive Alliance government was in power. Kumar, who is credited with busting several terror cells and preventing terrorist attacks, told The Sunday Guardian that former CBI director Ranjit Sinha, former Special Director of CBI, Saleem Ali, IPS officer Satish Verma and others were part of a conspiracy to target honest officers who were doing their job.
“The nexus between police officers, bureaucrats, certain politicians and mafia groups had become very evident during the UPA time. The evidence to support this, whether it was about harassing honest officials involved in anti-terror activities or the bungling in investigating the coal scam, is with the government and the accused in all these cases are common. However, these scamsters are roaming free or are in various positions because of the indifference, incompetence and lack of focus of the present government, which is shying away from prosecuting them despite being in power for more than two and half years,” Kumar said. Kumar claimed that these officers are being protected by certain sections of the present bureaucracy because of various reasons.
Kumar said that a Congress politician, who was very powerful between 2004 and 2014, influenced CBI’s investigations by using Ranjit Sinha to spread “misinformation” and “compromise India’s security”. “In June, the Gujarat police killed four Lashkar terrorists (in the Ishrat Jahan case) on the basis of inputs provided by the Intelligence Bureau. This incident was used by this politician to frame two politicians who were emerging on the national level,” Kumar alleged.
“Before UPA, there were only two classes of victims who suffered in a terror attack—innocent civilians and members of the armed forces, but after UPA, a third class has emerged, those who were targeted for doing their job honestly,” he said, referring to the victimisation of IB and police officials during the Ishrat Jahan case.
According to him, it was because of Sinha and Ali, both of whom were taking instructions from the Congress leader, that crucial details of IB’s anti-terror operations, the agency’s sources, its resources and its ways of working came into the public domain.
“They ripped open the IB and got hold of information like call detail records (CDR) records of serving IB officials and shared them with government officials and private individuals who had no security clearances. Satish Verma had no security clearance to see confidential information, but no one stopped him as he was being guided by Sinha, Ali and the Congress leader. CDRs were shared with private lawyers, who made them public. You can just imagine the kind of information one can get from the CDRs of a serving IB officer, which is not just restricted to his domestic and overseas sources that are cultivated by putting in years and years of efforts,” Kumar stated.
Kumar stated that he has apprised the present government of the confidential details that were made public by the CBI which seriously affected the IB’s functioning. “I have already written a letter, giving details about what kind of information was made public by the CBI at the time. I cannot share those details with the media,” he said.
Referring to the coal scam, Kumar said that the entire investigation was flawed from the beginning. “The starting point of the criminal investigation in the case should have been the Coal Minister and the first accused in the FIR should have been the Cabinet minister in charge of the Ministry of Coal, with the allottees being the second accused and head of the screening committees being the next accused. But the CBI’s FIRs named the private allottees as the prime accused and ignored the role of the Coal Minister. The omission of not naming the Coal Minister in the FIRs was intended to sabotage the cases against the real beneficiaries of the scam. And this omission would not have taken place without the connivance of the Director CBI of that time (Sinha). The Congress leader and Sinha were helped by legal officers who are still a part of the entire process,” Kumar said.