One more officer of Telangana Anti-Corruption Bureau — second in less than three months — has been suspended on grounds of ‘poor performance’.
This time it was ACB DSP J. Ashok Kumar. Unlike when State government officers are caught on corruption charges or for sharing information in any other cases, the ACB authorities didn’t issue any statement on the officer’s suspension.
Earlier, on February 17, ACB Inspector P. Sridhar was suspended. That time too, the ACB officials didn’t issue any statement about the reasons behind his suspension.
All that they said off the record then was that he fared poorly in performance of duties. A few days later, a constable of ACB, Om Prakash, was also suspended on a similar charge.
In J. Ashok Kumar’s case too, an ACB officer rang up media persons on Friday (claiming that he was speaking off the record) and said the DSP was placed under suspension for poor performance.
Interestingly, both P. Sridhar and J. Ashok Kumar were directly or indirectly connected to the investigation of the corruption case involving Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority Director K. Purushotham Reddy.
This naturally triggered speculation if Sridhar was suspended for ‘poor performance’ in the case of Madhusudhan Reddy, who managed to evade ACB officials for several days after a case was registered against him.
After the suspension, Mr. Sridhar said in private conversations that his suspension had no connection with Mr. Madhusudhan Reddy’s corruption case. He maintained that he had tried to convince ACB higher officials that he did his best in every task he was assigned.
However, officials didn’t revoke Sridhar’s suspension till date. Soon after Sridhar’s suspension, Ashok Kumar was shifted from the post of ACB City Region-2 DSP and posted as ACB Headquarters DSP. He has been suspended from this post now.
