Lucknow: The way the Yogi Adityanath government has handled the state’s biggest “transfer-posting scam” exposed by its own police officer-Vaibhav Krishna-August last year indicates its lack of seriousness to fight corruption in bureaucracy, experts say.
Six months delay in setting up the Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the murky details of this, no action on the five accused Indian police service officers so far and suspension of the whistle-blower Vaibhav Krishna over an explicit video within a week-says it all.
Moreover, there is a mysterious silence over the bigwigs who are actually responsible for IPS transfer and posting.
To make matter worse, there is no word on the probe headed by IG Meerut who was reportedly asked to look into this case after Krishna shot off letters to CM and DGP in December apprising them again about the scam.
“The government claims that it seeks to end corruption. But when senior officer traces such a big scam, the government does nothing. It comes in action only when the entire report was leaked to media. This clearly shows the intention of the government,” Vikram Singh, former DGP of Uttar Pradesh tells FPJ.
Mr Singh says had the government taken swift and strong action, it would have given a message of its seriousness over graft. Mr Singh also questions the rationality behind the government action on police officers Thursday.
Singh says, “It seems that cumulative action has been taken against all. Instead of attaching the accused officers to DG head-quarters as the tradition was in the past they had been given other postings. However, an honest officer like Vaibhav Krishna was quickly suspended for intellectual dishonesty.”
As per Krishna’s investigation, the accused cops- Ghaziabad SSP Sudhir Singh, Rampur SP Ajay Pal Sharma, Banda SP Ganesh Saha, Sultanpur SP Himanshu and Rajiv Narayan Mishra, then SP Kushinagar- have allegedly paid Rs50-80 lakh to get plum districts with the help of four journalists who had been imprisoned since then.
These officers have been transferred to non-field posts such as Police training, Human Rights Cell, PAC and others on Thursday.
Explaining the transfer process of IPS, Singh says, “The transfer process involves a set of procedure which starts from ADG (Karmik) and ends at the chief secretary office. The DGP is not involved in the transfer-posting. However, DGP is a kingpin. Nothing usually happens without DGP consent.”
Singh says its usually clerks and junior officers in the office of bigwigs who collect bribe from IPS officers promising them desired transfer and posting.
A senior journalist requesting anonymity says, “SITs are formed just to dump the cases under carpet. This case will also be dumped as Krishna has been made scape goat.
If government takes against corrupt officers, the scam will be validated which will damage the BJP. That’s why Vaibhav Krishna has been made scapegoat.”
A senior police officer said that this scam is nothing new and that the transfer posting racket is common in all departments. Such things come out only when things go awry.
