The home secretary, after a quick assessment of the findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General, has given a clean chit to the Home Department. In a report submitted to the government on Wednesday, additional chief secretary (ACS) in charge of home Vishwas said he had found no merit in most of findings made by the CAG against Kerala Police and its DGP Loknath Behera.
The ACS has also approved the Crime Branch finding that no 5.56 mm INSAS rifles had gone missing from the police armoury. The CAG report had said there was a shortage of 25 such rifles. The Crime Branch had on February 17 did a public count of the rifles to demonstrate that none had gone missing.
As for the vanished bullets, the ACS report said more investigation needs to be carried out. The report hinted that it could be nothing more than a procedural lapse. A CB team led by Crime Branch IG S Sreejith has already begun a probe into the mystery of the missing bullets. The CAG finding was that 12,061 bullets were missing from the armory of the Special Armed Police Battallion (SAPB), Thiruvananthapuram.
The ACS report has seconded Crime Branch ADGP Tomin J Thachankary's reasoning that bullets were lost from 1996, the year the LDF government under V S Achuthanandan took over. For the purposes of investigation, this near quarter century period will be divided into seven phases.
The CB probe will check whether periodical physical verification were conducted by officers. It was only in 2004 that an executive order was issued detailing the steps to be taken to secure and maintain arms and ammunition in the Police Department.
The directions included instructions to officers who were in charge of arms and ammunition into check the stock under their charge at least once a week and make an entry in in the register maintained for the purpose. It was also instructed that the Company Commander/Circle Inspector should conduct surprise physical verification of stocks of Arms and Ammunition once a month and make a record of it in the register maintained for the purpose.
Further, the Superintendent of Police/Commandant should check the arms and ammunition once in every six months and satisfy himself that they were properly maintained. It was also laid down that senior police officers visiting the camps or police stations, too, should physically verify the arms and ammunitions in stock, the quantity received and issued, and jot down their findings in their Inspection Reports.
The CAG audit had found that no such verification was done in any consistent manner.
The ACS report says that the CAG's accusation of Keltron was "unjustified". The CAG had pulled up Keltron for doing away with open tenders while inviting bids for special orders. The CAG had also stated that Kerala Police could have bypassed Keltron and floated limited tenders. "Besides Kerala Police, Keltron was total solutions provider for many other public sector units," the ACS report states. Further, the ACS report states that Keltron was functioning as Kerala Police's total solutions provider on the basis of a government order.
The DGP was also given a clean chit. The report said that a villa was constructed for the DGP because there was no official residence for the topmost police functionary in the state. As for the diversion of funds meant for the modernisation of the police force, the ACS report said it was later ratified by the Cabinet.
