PNB fraud case

loan default case

liquor baron Vijay Mallya

fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi

Vineet Agarwal, a special director, exceeded his brief by relieving Joint Director Satyabrata Kumar, who was in London to contest Nirav’s bail.The Centre on Tuesday removed Vineet Agarwal, the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) Mumbai-based special director, for allegedly exceeding his brief by relieving Joint Director Satyabrata Kumar without following the due procedure.Kumar is supervising investigations in theand theagainstThe government curtailed Agarwal’s stint in the ED by around three years, said sources. He had joined the ED in January 2017 for a five-year tenure and headed the western region, which has jurisdiction over Maharashtra, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The 1994 IPS batch officer has been repatriated to his home state of Maharashtra.On March 29, Agarwal had issued an order relieving Kumar of his charge, except in cases related to the coal block allocation scam, on the grounds that the latter had completed five years of his tenure on March 12. At that time, Kumar was in London as part of a joint ED-CBI team that India had sent to contest the bail plea of the PNB scam’s key accusedin London.A special director is only empowered to transfer or alter the charge of an official up to the level of an assistant director, and not of a joint director.Within hours of the relieving order, ED Director Sanjay Kumar Mishra issued a fresh order in Delhi and cancelled the previous directive, which was seen as an alleged interference with the PNB case probe. The same day, the finance ministry extended Kumar’s tenure. An IRS officer, Kumar waspart of the team that liaised with the Crown Prosecution Service, which represents India in the UK court, for hearings related to Mallya’s extradition.The finance ministry issued the order removing Agarwal after getting sanction from the appointments committee of the cabinet. Subsequently, the ED headquarters in Delhi issued the relieving order. Agarwal’s charge has now been handed over in an additional capacity to the agency’s special director based in Chennai.