The CBI today arrested two senior officers of the Ministry of Home Affairs in two separate cases — an alleged excise evasion racket in the Union Territory of Daman, and an alleged scam in the purchase of bulletproof jackets for use by central police forces.
O Ravi, a 1983-batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer and joint secretary in the Ministry, was arrested for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 25 lakh to get the Administrator of Daman and Diu transferred. A 52-year-old Air India airhostess called Anu Puri, six distillers, two excise inspectors and a policeman were also arrested following searches at 36 locations in New Delhi, Mumbai and Daman.
The second officer, R S Sharma, is accused of taking a Rs 10-lakh bribe from the owners of security equipment company M/s ATL to help them land a contract for the supply of 59,000 bulletproof jackets.
Sharma, a 1984-batch officer of the Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers, was on deputation with the Ministry, and involved with the modernization of central police forces, provisioning of stores for central paramilitary forces, and allocation of weaponry for all police forces.
It is not even the tip of the iceberg, since such rackets in the IAS/CSS start right from the day these creatures are inducted. If the powers-that-be are indeed interested, and give the total freedom to forget all and concentrate only on these two service officers for one year, right from the top down to the junior-most in the line, then the supply line from the down upwards to the higher terminals will be traced and caught. This will enable the CBI to track up/down the course of the source and origin plus the destination as well as the mode of sharing of the bribe money/illegal income being generated every day in the rooms and corridors of the both wings of the central secretariat and the CG offices scattered all over in Delhi/various outside locations. And, it would also be possible to identify the stakeholders in the huge octopus-like money-making “bribe industry” in the country. Let us not bother about the animals called “politicians” or the menials below the rank og section officers in the central/state governments– they merely run the courier services and, in many cases, they even allow their own women folk to become and be used as pawns/consumable raw materials in this highly-profitable-no- risk-industry, in which the turnover is very, very high, higher than the highest recorded/documented ever.
If we leave the clerks, B, C & D-Group officials (and even IFS-B officers, unless these are found involved in spying against the country, another profitable pastime of many top-most serving and retired armed forces and civil service officers, kept secret by the government to avoid embarrassment) and concentrate only on the JS-and-higher targets for sometime, as a calculated strategy, we will really know the insider-enemies of the country-people, whose ill-gotten wealth is all stashed outside the country, in safe havens. They are the real big fish, the true Madhuri Guptas, no less dangerous to us than the D-Company Boss (who at least reportedly takes care of some poorest hamlets in the country, i.e., in and around Mumbai). A random and blind action against top 100 civll and top 100 defence services officers servants in India, selected on random basis, on any given day will certainly show the extent of the ailment, i.e., corruption. But, for this type of action, the government must promise the CBI total freedom, and for which no prior sanction of the Minister should be required. We are hundred percent sure that our premier investigation agency shall give us the desired gift: the mirror which will show us our true face!
Will the governments in the States (including the DMK and the CPM, as well as the BJP) and at the Centre accept this challenge?