Chandigarh: The editor-in-chief of Gurugram-based Power Sportz TV, Kanthi D. Suresh, has written to the Haryana Police seeking an FIR against certain “officials of the state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau” for “harassing her, raiding her (office) premises, blackmail, intrusion, and impersonation”.
Kanthi is also the wife of Haryana’s 1995-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer D. Suresh, who is a principal secretary-level officer and is posted as Resident Commissioner of Haryana in Delhi.
The IAS officer’s name had cropped up in connection with alleged irregularities in land allotment to a school in Gurugram.
Kanthi sent her first complaint over mail on 26 April to the Director General of Police (DGP), headquarters, with reminders on 4 May and 10 May.
She has marked copies to Haryana chief secretary Sanjeev Kaushal, Gurugram deputy commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav, and Gurugram police commissioner Kala Ramachandran.
Yadav last week forwarded the complaint of Kanthi — who is an alumna of London School of Journalism and has worked with Doordarshan — to the chief secretary for action in the matter.
Kanthi told ThePrint that on 26 April, two persons “from the State Vigilance Bureau” (SVB, which was renamed as Anti-Corruption Bureau earlier this year) visited the Power Sportz TV office in Sector 44 of Gurugram in her absence.
“Introducing themselves as employees of Gurugram Municipal Corporation, they asked my accountant, Rajender Prasad, to accompany them to their office. However, they took him to the SVB office in Gurugram, interrogated him and threatened him,” she said over phone.
“They asked him to confess knowing certain people. He was also shown certain forged documents where his name was mentioned. The SVB officers seized Prasad’s mobile phone too,” Kanthi alleged. “What right did the officers have to raid a private office without an FIR, or any other valid reason?”
“Since we have CCTV cameras installed at our establishment, I have provided all the pictures and videos of the unlawful kidnapping of our accountant to the authorities along with my complaint,” she added.
In her mail sent on 10 May, Kanthi wrote to the authorities: “The official concerned had the audacity to seize my accountant’s mobile… he had the impudence, impertinence, pluck and insolence to ask my accountant details about me.”
“I am hopeful the state will soon file an FIR and make necessary arrests of the accused, our investigation, proofs and evidence shall continue with the intention to provide necessary help in nabbing the mafia existing in the state of Haryana,” she added.
A senior officer from the Anti-Corruption Bureau described Kanthi’s allegations as baseless.
“The accountant, Rajender Prasad, was duly made to join the investigation in an FIR registered by the SVB at Gurugram. During the course of investigation, some incriminating evidence had come to the fore which I will not be able to reveal at present. The SVB has already moved an application to the Haryana government seeking approval under the Prevention of Corruption Act to ask the IAS officer (D. Suresh) to join the probe,” the officer told ThePrint.
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Land allotment under the lens
In 2020, the Haryana SVB had recommended action against D. Suresh as well as other state officers for allegedly causing loss to the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran (formerly Haryana Urban Development Authority) by re-allotting a plot in 2019 to a school in Gurugram at land rates prevailing in the year 1993.
According to the vigilance inquiry report, the plot was allotted to the school in 1993 but the letter of intent was withdrawn in 2003. Suresh was then serving as the chief administrator of HSVP.
When asked about the case in which her husband’s name has cropped up, Kanthi told ThePrint that “as far as any action is concerned, there is a standard operating procedure defined under Section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, that mandates the government’s approval before proceeding against a public servant with regard to decisions taken or recommendations made by him in the discharge of official duties”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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