The Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Tamil Nadu government are engaged in a fierce battle where each is conducting a separate investigation into allegations of bribery against an ED officer who is currently detained. As a result, the ED has moved its investigation against the accused officer – its own officer – and state DVAC officials to its New Delhi headquarters.
According to sources, the decision was made out of concern that the state police would interfere and not cooperate. The central agency wrote to the state director general of police on December 2, one day after the DVAC of Tamil Nadu arrested ED officer Ankit Tiwari in Madurai and conducted searches at the ED’s local office. The letter asked the director general to file a formal complaint against the state vigilance officials for allegedly trespassing on the agency’s property.
The ED alleged in a letter to the DGP that 35 individuals broke into its Madurai office on December 1 without the required search warrants and removed confidential case files. Since then, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, which is a branch of the ministry of home affairs, has assumed responsibility for the protection of the ED’s office or offices in Tamil Nadu. It was unclear from sources in Delhi whether the ED’s requested FIR had been filed at this point.
In a parallel move, the ED moved its case to its New Delhi headquarters and filed an enforcement case information report (ECIR), which is similar to a police file report, to look into the allegations made against Tiwari by the state vigilance department for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs. 20 lakh from a government employee.
In response to a report from the vigilance department, the TN police have filed a formal complaint (FIR) against central agency officials for allegedly interfering with and hindering their searches at the agency’s Madurai office on December 1-2. The ED had alerted the DGP to its concerns about the sensitivity of its activities.
“There was no mention of these 35 people who were present. Their identity is not known. Whether they are police or private parties, even that is not known. Whether anyone has vested interest as of now is also not ascertainable. We are in the process of ascertaining the same. How many documents were copied (and could be misused) is also not known,” the ED had said in its letter to the DGP.
The enforcement agency also raised concerns about the safety of its witnesses, whose identity it had kept secret, in the cases concerning powerful people. “There are many cases which require protection of witnesses since the ED is investigating many powerful people in the state. We have a video recording which shows the presence of 35 people,” the ED wrote.
