NGO says no complaint sent against Delhi’s special vigilance secy

The officer, YVVJ Rajasekhar, has been at the centre of a storm since Monday, when the Delhi government divested him of all his duties.

A Delhi-based NGO that purportedly sent a legal notice to the state administration, accusing the state’s special vigilance secretary of corruption and extortion on Thursday denied issuing any such document, prompting the officer to write to the Centre, doubling down on his rebuttal of the claims and professing his innocence.

The NGO’s chairperson wrote to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, saying his organisation has neither issued a legal notice nor filed a complaint against any Delhi government officer. (ANI)

The officer, YVVJ Rajasekhar, has been at the centre of a storm since Monday, when the Delhi government divested him of all his duties and ordered him to hand over all files, after it reportedly received complaints of graft against him.

The saga took a twist when government officials cited a legal notice sent on May 12 by Abhinav Samaj NGO, accusing accused Rajasekhar of “corruption, forgery and harassment”, as well as of “threatening people”. HT has seen a copy of the letter.The officer rejected these allegations in a detailed, 150-page denial on Wednesday.

On Thursday, however, the NGO’s chairperson, GK Gupta, wrote to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, saying, “Abhinav Samaj has neither issued a legal notice nor filed a complaint against any Delhi government officer.”

Gupta, himself a retired Delhi government officer, told HT, “The organisation has not forwarded such a complaint.”

Rajasekhar, in his letter to the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) on Thursday, affirmed sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation or Enforcement Directorate, to ascertain “how the unauthorised legal notice was prepared and issued”. He also wrote to the Press Council of India.

“It is requested that the Ministry of Home Affairs, Gol may kindly consider entrusting this matter to CBI-ED and other investigating agencies as the vested interests’ stakes are unfathomable and requires wider investigation by the specialized agencies that has jurisdiction to deal with intrastate and inter-state conspiracies,” he wrote.

Advocate Milind M Bharadwaj, on whose letterhead the legal notice was sent, said his client had “turned hostile under the influence or inducement of vested interests.”

A Delhi government officer confirmed that the agency’s lawyer said the NGO had “backtracked”.

“Regardless of this, the complaint that was submitted by the NGO was only an aggregation of all the different complaints and investigations Rajasekhar has been accused and indicted in. All these complaints exist in the public domain and are independently verifiable,” said the official.