CBI books IAS officer, family in disproportionate assets case

CBI has not made public details of its latest DA (disproportionate assets) case against the officer as to how much wealth he has amassed

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, and his family members for allegedly amassing disproportionate assets (DA) more than their known sources of income, people familiar with the development said on Thursday.

The IAS officer is currently posted as secretary revenue department in Jammu and Kashmir. (Representative file photo)

Ranjan, currently posted as secretary of labour and employment department in Jammu and Kashmir, was deputy commissioner (Kupwara) and was under the scanner in agency’s probe into irregularities in the issuance of thousands of arms licences to non-residents in the Union territory.

An IAS officer of 2010-batch, Ranjan has been named as accused along with family members – Kirpa Shankar Roy and Dulari Devi – and unknown others in the first information report (FIR) filed by the CBI on February 17.

The federal agency had, on Wednesday, carried out searches at seven locations including Ranjan’s office in Jammu and other places in Varanasi, Srinagar and Gurugram.

Since 2019, CBI is probing irregularities in the issuance of more than 2.78 lakh arms licences in several districts of J&K to the non-entitled persons between 2012 and 2016 by the district magistrates/deputy commissioners/licencing authorities in lieu of monetary considerations by abusing their official position. The agencies have estimated that the alleged irregularity could be more than ₹100 crore.

In November last year, the Centre had granted sanction to prosecute Ranjan in the arms licences probe, in which the agency had sought sanction against a total of eight IAS officers who were posted in different districts of J&K.

CBI has not made public details of its latest DA (disproportionate assets) case against Ranjan as to how much wealth he has amassed.

The entire racket was originally unearthed by Rajasthan police in 2017 after which it had written several letters to J&K government but didn’t receive any response. The Rajasthan ATS (anti-terrorism squad) had claimed that 1,32,321 of the 1,43,013 licences in Jammu region’s Doda, Ramban and Udhampur districts were issued to those residing outside the state.

The figure for the entire state was estimated to be 4,29,301, of which just 10% were issued to residents in the state.

A sample survey of licences issued from Kupwara, a frontier district in north Kashmir, showed that no files or registers were maintained by the district authorities and many of the arms licences may have been issued to outsiders on the basis of forged documents.

Earlier this week, a division bench of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh comprising chief justice Tashi Rabstan and justice MA Chowdhary directed the Union home ministry to file a status report and convey its final decision regarding the prosecution sanction of three other IAS officers.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also conducted a parallel money laundering probe in the arms licences racket. The financial crimes probe agency has claimed that the accused persons, including government servants, directly hampered the security of the state.