New Delhi: Superintendent of Police T. Rajah Balaji, in a strongly-worded letter to the interim director of the Central Bureau of Investigation M. Nageshwar Rao, has sought a review of his transfer from the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), to the CBI training academy in Ghaziabad.
The letter comes as a response to a transfer order (No. 127/2019) that was issued “under the cover of darkness”, on January 22, 2019, which directed Balaji to move from the ACB to the Academy. This is among a slew of transfer orders which were passed under similarly surreptitious circumstances, especially after Rao was given interim charge of the CBI on January 10.
In his letter, Balaji lists several grounds for seeking a review of his transfer and levels serious allegations against Rao.
On June 16, 2018, Balaji had requested the then CBI director for a posting in any branch in Delhi so as to enable his wife to be better placed in order to provide care for her mother who was admitted in AIIMS as a cancer patient. His request was approved and he joined the ACB on October 10, 2018.
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Balaji asserts that it is a known fact that he had complained about Rao’s misconduct to the then director in letters dating as far back as March 11, 2017, and subsequently, when he was served a memo, he set out the allegations more explicitly on May 2, 2017.
Charging him with prejudicial conduct, Balaji asserts that the order to transfer him to the CBI Academy is motivated by Rao’s “personal sleepless malice” at the expense of institutional and public interests. He further states that the post of the director-in-charge cannot be used for any purpose other than the institutional and public interest, and that in that role, it was incumbent upon Rao not to “go on a spree of mass transfers” unnecessarily and on irrational grounds.
Furthermore, Balaji alleges that the order (No.127/2019) was issued “under the cover of darkness” and was illegal because “inferior inhumanity of a subordinate police officer in a Central government department cannot efface the superior humanitarianism of a cabinet minister,” and that such an act is not only a matter of common sense, but also “within the inexhaustible principles of equity in common law and unconscionable”.
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The other premise on which he demands a review is that the opening paragraph of the order reads that the “transfer… made with immediate effect till further orders,” means that the directions themselves are reviewable and reversible if proper reasons are offered.
Based on the fact that Balaji’s transfer was granted on humanitarian grounds by the then CBI director and accorded by the minister of housing and urban affairs, and that no review of the branch had been carried out to enable and justify the mass transfers as necessary, he further asserts that the transfer was unjustifiable.
Attempting to appeal to Rao’s humanity, but not mincing his words for even a moment, Balaji, in his closing paragraph says:
“You know better than me that you are not a man of honour… I readily admit to [not having] the intelligence to ‘distill’ good out for you. But I request you to search your heart and recall this fact: you bear, or think you bear, an animosity to me, not an ailing old woman. I request you purely on humanitarian grounds in the hope that you can truly make a start to redeem your humanity. It is never to late in life to become a good man again […] The rest is up to you. “
In March, 2018, Balaji was the chief investigating officer of the CBI who found that the key two-page document, in which Naba Kumar Sarkar – aka Aseemanand – had explained the alleged Mecca Masjid blast case conspiracy to the CBI, was missing.