The Tamil Nadu police have registered a case against officials of the Enforcement Directorate and others on charges of preventing investigators of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) from discharging their duties, police sources said on Sunday.
In a new twist to the ongoing standoff between the two agencies, the Madurai city police have registered a complaint lodged by the DVAC officials that they were prevented from conducting a search in the room of Enforcement Officer Ankit Tiwari on December 1, 2023, after he was arrested in a trap case.
Summons issued
After registering a case, the Madurai police issued summons to the Assistant Director, Directorate of Enforcement, Madurai, the sources said. The State police are yet to register a case on the complaint lodged by ED officials that the DVAC officials, accompanied by many unauthorised persons, conducted an illegal search on their office premises and stole sensitive and confidential case documents, the sources said.
“We lodged a complaint with the Madurai city police that the DVAC search team was prevented from entering the chamber of accused officer Ankit Tiwari for more than three hours. The Assistant Director informed that the Deputy Director was in Chennai and was air dashing to Madurai to approve the search. But he did not come… we had to seek the assistance of the local police to carry out the search,” a senior DVAC official told The Hindu.
The sequence of events, on how the DVAC officials were prevented from discharging their duty even after informing the ED Assistant Director that the designate court judge was apprised of the operation, was recorded in the search ‘magazar’ report, a copy of which was received and signed by the Assistant Director in the presence of official witnesses, the official who preferred not to be quoted said.
However, sources in the ED said the Assistant Director had put it in writing in the search ‘magazar’ report that he was receiving it “under protest”. He wrote in the report that the search was conducted in an unprofessional and illegal manner. The search team members neither produced their identity cards, nor showed any search authority documents. Despite repeated requests, the search team accessed confidential and sensitive documents that were not related to their case.
No complaint received
Asked whether any action was taken by the State police on the complaint lodged by the ED, a senior police officer said that no such complaint dated December 2, 2023, was received by the Director-General of Police/Head of Police Force. However, the media published the contents of the complaint the next day.
On December 16, 2023, a reminder letter requesting action was received by the DGP’s office wherein the original complaint was enclosed. The DGP forwarded the reminder enclosed with the original complaint to the Madurai Police Commissioner to conduct a detailed inquiry and send a report.
“As part of the inquiry, the Madurai Police Commissioner sent a letter calling the ED officials to give evidence to substantiate their allegations. But they refused to accept the letter and insisted that the same be sent by post. We then sent the letter by registered post… there is no response yet. They have not turned up for the inquiry so far,” the official said, adding that it was not correct to say that no action was taken on ED’s complaint.
