Forum for Good Governance (FGG) on Saturday appealed to Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan to order for a CBI investigation into the cases involving slain Naxalite-turned-gangster Nayeemuddin and his associates.
In a memorandum to the governor, the FGG said that the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the government in 2016 to investigate the cases involving Nayeem is incapable of executing the task.
FGG secretary M. Padmanabha Reddy, later speaking to the media, said that names of 25 police officers, some of them of the rank of Additional Superintendents of Police, cropped up in the initial stages of probe. However, the SIT replied to an inquiry under RTI Act that no policeman was cited as accused in any of the 173 criminal cases involving Nayeem’s gang. That amounted to giving clean chit to all the 25 police officers, and no action was being taken against them, he said.
FGG said that about 240 cases were registered after Nayeem was killed in an exchange of fire in 2016 based on his gang’s involvement in different crimes. Though it was said that chargesheets were filed in 173 cases so far, not a single case was taken to its logical end, he said.
It was said that Nayeem used to write diaries in which he would meticulously incorporate details of all his contacts, whom he had helped and the favours he got from them. During the raid on his house following his death, police seized two of his diaries, he said. “...But the diaries were not used in inquiry and in a way some IPS officers and politicians were left off the hook,” the FGG said. The FGG said Nayeem’s was a deadly combination of police, politicians and gangster coming together and committing atrocities against innocent people. Unless the probe was completed fairly and quickly, general public would lose faith in democracy, it said.
The FGG also expressed doubts over the figures of money seized by the police from Nayeem’s house. SIT had claimed to have used two counting machines to count money in his house but confirmed that only ₹3.74 lakh were recovered. “That sum can be counted in 15 minutes. Then what was the need for counting machines? We have a reason to believe that hundreds of crores were recovered and not accounted for,” he said.
