india

Updated: Jan 29, 2019 23:35 IST

The controversies at the Central Bureau of Investigation refuse to go away with a CBI superintendent of police (SP) accusing the agency’s interim director M Nageswara Rao of abusing his official position and acting with “personal sleepless malice and prejudice” for transferring him on January 21 after he complained about Rao’s alleged misconduct to then agency chief Alok Verma in March last year.

Rajah Balaji accused Rao of “not being a man of any honour”. Rao did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.

A CBI spokesman said the representation, “mentioned in the media reports”, of Rajah Balaji has not yet been received in the office of the director. “As and when it is received through proper channel, appropriate action as per rules will be taken. It may further be mentioned that Shri Rajah Balaji has been transferred to Ghaziabad which part of NCR (national capital region) only,” added the spokesman.

HT has seen a copy of Balaji’s representation. Balaji also questioned “mass transfers” in the agency by Rao, since he is only “director-in-charge”. Under Rao, the agency has seen almost three dozen transfers since he took over again as the interim director on January 11 following the ouster of Alok Verma.

Rao holds the rank of additional director in the agency but by virtue of being senior most officer in the agency, he was given interim charge on January 11 for the second time. The first time he was made interim director was after Verma and then special director Rakesh Asthana were divested of their respective responsibilities on October 23.

SP T Rajah Balaji has also moved the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) against his transfer which was ordered along with that of 19 other officials on the directions of Rao.

Rajah Balaji first wrote a strongly worded representation against his transfer from the agency’s Anti-Corruption Branch in Delhi to its training academy in Ghaziabad, his fourth transfer within two years, and then went on to file the petition in the CAT, which is slated to come up for hearing soon.

Balaji said was given a posting in New Delhi by then director Alok Verma on humanitarian grounds on August 1, 2018 as his mother-in-law, a cancer patient, was undergoing treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He was also allotted a residence in East Kidwai Nagar, which is close to AIIMS, after his request to Union minister of urban development and housing affairs Hardeep Puri.

Balaji said at a time when selection committee for appointing new agency chief was meeting, Rao should refrain from mass transfers as a matter of propriety. “It was incumbent and necessary in your capacity as only Director-in-charge not to go on a spree of mass transfers of various officers from the level of Joint Directors to Additional Superintendents of Police, and resort to any necessary transfer only on rational grounds that merit such a course in public interest,” said Balaji.

In his CAT petition, Balaji has also accused Rao of victimising him when he serving in Chennai and Rao was his joint director.

Quoting Shakespeare from his play Henry V, Balaji told Rao: “There is some soul of goodness in things evil; Would men observingly distil it out..” He added that he does not have intelligence to ‘distill’ good out of Rao but he should bear animosity to him, not an ailing old woman.

“I request you on purely humanitarian grounds in the hope that you can truly make a start to redeem your humanity. It is never late in life to become a good man again. Trust me. Trust the better part of your heart. No More, no less,” he wrote to Rao.