FERA Dy Director under inquiry

FERA Dy Director under inquiry
PRANATI MEHRA

MUMBAI, FEBRUARY 22: The post of the deputy director, FERA, Mumbai, seems to be jinxed. After D D Gupta vacated the post last year (April) following an unprecedented threat from his own subordinate officers, the post had been lying vacant for almost six months. Gupta was threatened in his office by enforcement officers who felt he did not support them enough in defending a case slapped on them for alleged human rights abuses.

The incumbent, R K Pandey, who took over after Gupta, has now landed himself in a controversy following seizures of rough diamonds made by his department in December 1999. Pandey is under inquiry by the ED's Special Director (Vigilance) S S Bajpai for keeping the seized goods in the ED's custody for an inordinately long period of time.

Pandey was asked to make himself scarce from the ED's Nariman Point office for a fortnight, pending the inquiry. He had resumed duty on February 15, but then went out of town again. Attempts by The Indian Express

to reach him on Tuesday, when he was in office, failed.

About 40 parcels of rough diamonds were being sent for polishing to Surat, through angadias (traditional couriers), when Pandey's department seized them, for alleged undervaluation in imports. The department was apparently investigating suspected compensatory payments in hawala. All the diamond units were from SEEPZ.

The seizures were done on December 24. The affected importers, as members of the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council took up the matter with the Finance Ministry and are learnt to have met the new director of ED, S S Dawra, even before he took over his post in January this year.

The trade claimed that the ED could not hold on to their stock-in-trade for an unreasonably long time, even pending investigations.

Bajpai, who came down to Mumbai for the inquiry on January 24, has also looked into the matter of one enforcement officer, Sanjay Kumar, who had been virtually put out to pasture on orders from the ED director's office last year. Kumar was ordered to be given tasks in the office which did not involve public interaction. Kumar was allegedly `rehabilitated' by Pandey when he took over and had also participated in searches, including the diamonds case.

In fact, Bajpai himself got a rude shock when he came for the inquiry: while he had instructed for arrangements of a three-day stay, the Mumbai office had made arrangements for only one day!

Pandey's controversial seizures of imported fabrics in the city, another case where he held on to the seized goods, was also a subject of Bajpai's inquiry, sources claim.

Following the inquiry, some of the goods have also been released, but details were not available due to Pandey's absence.