Meet the Investigating Officer who scaled a wall to nab Chidambaram

Two Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) teams jumped past the boundary wall and swiftly made their way inside P Chidambaram’s residence.

On Wednesday night as a retinue of Delhi Police officials stood guard outside former Union minister P. Chidambaram’s residence in New Delhi’s Jor Bagh, gates shut, the house turned into a fortress.

R. Parthasarathy scaled the walls of Chidambaram’s home and emerged with the senior Congress leader, half an hour later, and drove him away to the agency’s headquarters.

Quietly, two Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) teams jumped past the boundary wall and swiftly made their way inside. Leading the charge and scaling the wall deftly was R. Parthasarathy, the CBI’s investigating officer in the INX Media case, who scaled the walls of Chidambaram’s home and emerged with the senior Congress leader, half an hour later, and drove him away to the agency’s headquarters.

More than two years back, as the CBI filed its First Information Report (FIR) in a case that involved the former senior minister of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and his son, Karti Chidambaram, Parthasarathy set the wheels in motion on the investigation.

A year later, in April 2018, seated next to him was Karti Chidambaram, at New Delhi’s Patiala House Courts Complex. With a watertight case, the CBI special court sent Karti Chidambaram to CBI custody and eventually judicial custody.

Former officials who have served with the agency recall Parthasarathy as a “quiet, determined officer,” and as the man “who can see the INX case through to its logical conclusion.”