Why is India's most decorated revenue officer JP Singh being hounded?

The Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) probe into charges of irregularities against JP Singh, a 2000 batch Indian Revenue Service officer at the Customs and Excise wing and who was joint director with the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Ahmedabad, has reached a dead end.

The investigation, started on September 23, with the CBI searching Singh's residence.

"We are now wondering if there is a case to be made out at all," said a CBI source. "It's now emerging that all accused with non-bailable warrants against them had joined hands to complain to the ED and finance ministry. It was they who asked the CBI to investigate the complaint by Duljraj Jain, Anil Jaisinghani, Mansukh Jain, Mukesh Sharma and Afroz Fatta."

All five are bookies and the complaint was that Singh had demanded bribes from the them for the betting case to be dropped.

"While Sharma has been in jail for eight months, hawala scam-accused Fatta, who was arrested for funding the Mujahideen, has been cooling his heels in jail for a year and a half. Others are on the run," the CBI source said.

Many in the ED and Customs & Excise Wing, Singhs' parent cadre, too, have expressed shock and dismay over the way his name was dragged through dirt. "There are some senior officials within ED who are unhappy that he excelled wherever he was posted," said one officer.

"He has often been responsible for exposing the nexus between these officials and betting rackets and hawala operators. Why else would an officer decorated by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley himself for his work in May 2014 be targeted like this a year later?" he said.

He recounted several instances of good work Singh had been doing. In his first posting at the Directorate of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCI), Vapi, Singh was instrumental in closing down many 100% export-oriented units (EOUs) in south Gujarat. They were all running only on paper. This action saved money hundreds of crores of precious foreign exchange in 2003-04.

While in the customs department, Mumbai, he unearthed a diesel smuggling racket by chasing ships on rented boats. At the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Mumbai, his case against Microsoft led to the multinational software major paying Rs 250 crore to the government. Later, he exposed an agents' racket at the Censor Board.

"In the ED, he was able to expose a huge hawala racket involving Rs 10,000 crore and a cricket-betting racket involving more than Rs 5,000 crore. The cricket-betting racket saw 10 arrests and five arrest warrants being issued. Properties of many bookies were attached. Action was being taken against betfair.com, through which many thousands of crores go outside India every year," pointed out an ED official.

"For the first time in history, the ED, under JP Singh, attached 1,260 acres of land in the US in a bank-loan fraud case," he said.

The official pooh-poohed claims that Singh demanded bribes. "In that case, why doesn't it reflect in his lifestyle? He still travels by taxi and public transport."

He talked about how the trio of JP Singh and two assistant director-level officers — Sanjay Kumar and P S Srinivas — who have been transferred outside Gujarat on charges of "demanding huge bribes," had actually busted both the hawala and international cricket-betting racket.

"The charges made by businessmen and hawala operators are fraudulent since the Surat hawala case is being monitored by none other than a Supreme Court (SC)-appointed Special Investigating Team (SIT) probing black money," he said.

Customs and Excise wing officials speak of the joint director being under tremendous pressure from all sides. ED officials, from Mumbai to Delhi, admit that Singh "created many enemies for himself and his core team. Yet, we are shocked at the CBI searching Singh's residence. He is among our strongest and brave officials in the agency who took on corporates and politicians head-on. If this is how he is rewarded, how will anyone stick his head out?" he said.

A former senior DRI official, who J P Singh reported to in many cases, echoed this. "There's no precedent of a case being registered and searches conducted only on the basis of complaints filed with the MoF. If we start complaining about CBI officials to the MoF, would similar searches be conducted?" he said.

Suspecting mischief behind the complaint, he said, "The joint director was onto something big in the online cricket-betting world. His officers say this information would have brought the entire IPL under scanner. If he was really after money, why did the hawala case go all the way to SC? This is malicious mischief. This will send a wrong signal to revenue officials. If you have cases of such magnitude in hand, anything could happen, if you decide to go by the book."