The CBI’s Research Wing is a legacy of former Director Subodh Kumar Jaiswal who created it. The unit, headed by a joint director rank officer, is jokingly called it’s a “cooling off” unit within the agency. Interestingly, the officer heading it is, the one who followed Jaiswal to the agency from the CISF.
Maharashtra cadre IPS officer Nawal Bajaj came on central deputation to the CISF when Jaiswal was chief of this paramilitary force. When Jaiswal shifted to the CBI, Bajaj too followed him there as joint director. But now Bajaj is going back to his parent cadre after he was prematurely repatriated with an “extended cooling off” period though he had his CBI tenure till 2026 .
He was handling coal block cases in the agency and therefore the CBI had to seek permission of the Supreme Court to remove him from the probe. Any officer associated with coal scam probe can be removed only with the prior permission of SC.
Once the CBI got permission from the court, Bajaj was transferred to the Research Wing from the Economic Offences zone. It was expected that Bajaj will be one of the Additional Directors of the agency after he had been empaneled as Addtitional Director General at the centre.
But the agency, instead of promoting Bajaj, got a new additional director, Assam-Meghalaya cadre officer AYV Krishna, a batch mate of Bajaj, from CRPF. Bajaj was recently given a farewell and by month end he will be back in Maharashtra.
