High drama was witnessed on Monday when Vigilance Department sleuths searched the house of suspended IG-rank officer Amitabh Thakur, who is locked in a tussle with SP chief Mulayam Singh, in a disproportionate assets case.
A member of the Vigilance Department team was seen darting out of the residence with a sheaf of papers in his hands and being confronted by an angry Mr. Thakur, a senior IPS officer.
Mr. Thakur wanted his documents to be returned but the vigilance sleuth refused to do so.
“The vigilance team is conducting a raid at my residence as Director Vigilance Bhanu Pratap Singh is working as a SP man. I am being harassed as I have lodged FIR against Mulayam Singh Yadav,” Mr. Thakur told reporters outside his Gomti Nagar house.
Mr. Thakur last week gave a complaint at the Vibhuti Khand police station seeking registration of an FIR against the Vigilance Director and others for alleged misrepresentation of facts in their inquiry report against him.
The Vigilance Department had lodged an FIR against him last month charging him with possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. He was suspended in July after he lodged a police complaint against Mr Singh, accusing him of threatening him over phone and attached to the Director-General of Police (DGP) headquarters.
Mr. Thakur alleged that Vigilance Department chief and his subordinates have prepared a list of properties owned by his parents, brother, wife and an organisation with which he was earlier attached to, and showed them as his assets.
He said neither he nor his relatives were given a chance to explain about the acquisition of those properties.
Mr. Thakur maintained that it is a rule in any open inquiry, before declaring any property benami, the Vigilance Department should give the owners and suspected beneficiary a chance to explain. He claimed this was not done in order to implicate him in a hurried manner.
When the vigilance team emerged out of Mr. Thakur’s house, waiting media persons asked it about the findings of the search, but the officials refused to divulge any details.
As media persons and onlookers gathered outside his house, Mr. Thakur said the sleuths had refused to show their identity cards when he asked for the same and behaved like party workers.-PTI
