There is one side to the corruption story which never really sees the light. The side which blows the whistle, the side which spills the beans, the side without whose efforts, corruption in a corrupt system would be forever hidden. Sometimes the whistle blowers are men and often they are institutions. While Herald has had an extremely short fuse when it comes to tolerating inefficiency and insensitivity in government institutions, especially the police, bodies like the Anti Narcotics Cell and the Anti Corruption Bureau have fought lonely battles to crack cases only to run into walls of non cooperation from the other bureaucracy and politicians.
Often these departments have battled against their own system and perhaps against their own officers in uniform. A clear instance of this is happening now. In the inquiry forced upon the DIG Range Police Headquarters and the Anti Corruption Bureau on IPS officer A V Deshpande for massive irregularities and illegalities in the Police Training School, sparked off by reports in Herald, there is a clear indication that the DIG is working to fulfil a mandate to protect Deshpande, who is now promoted to the IPS and therefore a “brother officer”. The DIG in his report shockingly cleared Deshpande of all charges of corruption and irregularities when there is evidence to the contrary. Clear damning, unequivocal evidence not only in the matter of awarding an electrical contract worth Rs 14 lakh verbally without following tender processes, but on virtually every level of functioning including the purchase of note books and pens. It now appears that Herald calling the Police Training School as the Police Graft School was not an exaggeration but perhaps even an underestimation of the levels to which the school management sank for petty illegal financial gains.
However the story came out through two whistleblowers and one officer. One was the contractor who was asked to do wiring work in the PTS worth 14 lakh by the PTS principal AV Deshpande IPS, who in his letter to the Director General of Police and the Chief Secretary revealed how works were auctioned without any tender, work orders or sanctions. Herald first learnt of this by accessing this letter. But another whistle blower emerged on this case. Police sub Inspector KM Maralkar who was stationed at the Police Training Schools in Valpoi under the overall charge of Superintendent of Police AV Deshpande who was Principal. His 25-page deposition to the DIG ion the shocking irregularities and corruption in the Police Training School is an expose in itself on each aspect of functioning. This has come from a junior officer who has had the courage to put pen to paper and write openly clearly against an IPS officer and his former boss. It’s an open charge sheet. And what does DIG V Renganathan do? He says ‘no credible evidence has been found to substantiate allegations levelled against officials of PTS’.
The only officer who has been pursuing this case is the DySP of the Anti Corruption Bureau Bossuet Da Silva who has resisted attempts within his own department to toe the line of the DIG and is pursuing the investigation against Deshpande and others in the PTS. He should also be counted on our list of whistle blowers and deserves our salutations.
The third again is Silva’s department the Anti Corruption Bureau. Mostly underrated, this body again came into play when it decided to raid the offices of the Sub Divisional Magistrate – albeit on the intervention of the Deputy Chief Minister – to unearth a huge number of files signed by Sub Divisional Magistrate Shabaji Sethye on property matters with a noting “please speak”. In each of these cases, there is a suspicion that the applicant has been called to “settle the case’” through monetary gratification. Notwithstanding the fact that Shetye is now a senior official posted in Panjim, his earlier office of SDM North was raided last week and many files with such notings unearthed.
We present to your these stories with a hope that as long we have whistleblowers, hidden in the system, the fight against corruption will not fall silent.
