In the wake of allegations that he threatened a fellow bureaucrat posted at the Capital’s anti-graft body with dire consequences for disallowing access to case records, a complaint alleging that he played a significant role in harbouring a hawala racket, surfaced against Mukesh Kumar Meena on Friday.
A Delhi Police inspector has accused his immediate senior of forcing him to turn a blind eye to the members of a money laundering racket at North Delhi’s Lahori Gate failing which, it is alleged, he was threatened with facing the 1989-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer’s wrath.
Received by the Delhi Government’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) from Inspector Jagmender Dahiya on April 29 this year, the said complaint, according to a senior ACB official, has been under preliminary enquiry since.
The said complaint, which has been accessed by The Hindu , was alluded to by Deputy Delhi Chief Minister Manish Sisodia at the Delhi Assembly on Friday as figuring among two significant complaints against Mr. Meena that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had brought to the notice of the Union Home Ministry in a secret note.
According to the complainant, he had successfully detained local hawala operators with lakhs in unaccounted cash, which was being recovered from their custody on two occasions while patrolling his beat located in the Lahori Gate area in 2014.
But he was “forced” to let them go after being “threatened” to do so by the Station House Officer of the local police station Rajender Kumar in Mr. Meena’s name.
Mr. Dahiya has claimed that he had detained two hawala operators on June 21 and July 3, 2014 with Rs. 15 lakh and Rs. 14.6 lakh being recovered from them, respectively. On both occasions, Mr. Dahiya has claimed, he was forced to let the alleged suspects go even as follow up procedure consisting of involving the Income Tax Department was disallowed by Mr. Kumar.
“Mr. Kumar himself came to the spot (both times) and thereafter continually threatened me from his official mobile phone for releasing such apprehended persons with black money…to put me in fear of injury for very bad consequences on the pretext of Joint Commissioner (New Delhi Range) Sh. Mukesh Meena,” Mr. Dahiya stated in his complaint.
Mr. Dahiya proceeds to request the registration of a case against Mr. Kumar as well as “his associates” including hawala operators, under the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The ACB, according to a senior official, is now preparing to take the preliminary enquiry into the complaint “to an advanced stage.”
The complaint was alluded to by Manish Sisodia at the Delhi Assembly as figuring among two significant complaints against ACB chief M. K. Meena
