The NDA government has appointed former National Investigation Agency chief Sharad Kumar as the vigilance commissioner in the Central Vigilance Commission. His appointment order, issued by the Department of Personnel and Training on Sunday, said that Kumar, a 1979 batch Haryana cadre IPS officer, will hold his new post for a term of four years or till he attains 65 years of age.
Kumar is already 62, which leaves him less than three years in his new assignment.
Sharad Kumar remained at the helm of the National Investigation Agency for more than four years after he was appointed as the Director General of NIA during the UPA tenure in 2013.
But following his retirement in October, 2015, the NDA government gave him re-employment on a contract basis with yearly extensions twice – a rarity in bureaucratic circles.
Sharad Kumar’s stint in NIA, under the NDA government, came under the spotlight as the NIA probe into the alleged Saffron Terror cases started crumbling.
Even ahead of his appointment in CVC, a group of NGOs last month submitted a memorandum to the President Ramnath Kovind opposing any move by the government to give him a post retirement job. The All India Network of NGOs and Individuals working with National and State Human Rights Institutions (AiNNI) had submitted a memorandum to the President expressing serious concerns over the possible appointment of the former NIA Chief as the member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which was the speculation then.
The memorandum mentioned that Kumar’s tenure as NIA chief had come under severe questioning as ‘’it was during his term all terror cases by right-wing Hindutva outfits associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were closed and almost all were resulting in acquittals of the accused.”
Kumar’s tenure in NIA first courted controversy after the opposition Congress alleged that the NIA probe into all terror related cases involving Hindu extremists got derailed. The Congress even alleged that Kumar was given an extension twice as NIA chief only to ensure that all alleged Hindu extremists accused in these cases are acquitted.
The probe into alleged Hindu terror cases began in the year 2011, when the previous UPA regime asked the National Investigation Agency to inquire into the alleged involvement of right-wing extremists in six terror cases and one murder case of former RSS pracharak Sunil Joshi.
The terror cases were related to blasts in Samjhauta Express in Haryana (2007), Malegaon in Maharashtra (2006 and 2008), Ajmer Dargah in Rajasthan (2007), Modasa in Gujarat (2008) and Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad (2008).
This year, the Mecca Masjid blast case is the second among Hindu terror cases, where trial has concluded and judgment has been pronounced acquitting the accused. The trial in the Ajmer Dargah blast case resulted in conviction of only three – Joshi, Devendra Gupta and Bhavesh Patel – out of nine accused persons. Those acquitted included Swami Aseemanand. In the Sunil Joshi murder case, the NIA handed over prosecution of the case to Madhya Pradesh police saying it has not found any evidence to suggest that his murder was linked to the larger Hindu terror conspiracy. It was said that Joshi was killed by his own men.
The court didn’t frame charges in the case and discharged all accused eight persons including Pragya Singh Thakur last year.
Incidentally, all charges were dropped by NIA against key accused Pragya Thakur in the 2008 Malegaon blast case . The investigation into the Modasa blast case also resulted in a naught after the case was closed for lack of evidence.