DNA exclusive: Raid on MK Stalin a Tamil plot?

Did any political party from Tamil Nadu take advantage of the DMK parting ways with the Congress-led UPA and conspire a CBI raid on DMK president M Karunanidhi’s sons, MK Stalin and Alagiri? At least, this is what the CBI suspects.

With a view to bringing out the conspiracy behind the raids carried out by the Chennai unit of the investigation agency’s without proper permission from New Delhi, the CBI has ordered a high level internal probe to fix the accountability of its erring officials.

A top CBI official told DNA there is suspicion that a senior officer in the agency’s Chennai unit colluded with a regional political party to carry out the raids by keeping the CBI’s brass in the dark.

In fact, the top brass in the CBI claims that “there was no mention of the names of the DMK leaders while seeking permission to carry out raids. And it appears to be deliberately concealed to serve a motivated purpose.”

CBI chief Ranjit Sinha has written to prime minister Manmohan Singh explaining the sequence of the investigation carried out by the agency. In the letter, Sinha claims that the Chennai unit had sought permission to lodge a Regular Case(RC) in the matter on February 12. But instead of giving go-ahead for an RC, a team was deployed to discreetly verify the locations of the cars alleged to have been imported in violation of the import provisions.

“On March 4, a communication was received for conducting a special drive from March 19 to March 21 involving officials from the customs, the central excise and service tax departments. So the permission was given to register an RC on March 20(Wednesday) a day before raids were carried out in Chennai,” a top CBI official said.

Though the additional director in the CBI headquarters in New Delhi was informed by the Chennai unit about its proposed searches for identification of the vehicles and their seizure, “there was no mention of premises belonging to DMK leaders,” the officer added.

“An imported vehicle bearing registration number TN07BM-1 was suspected to be available in the house of Udhayanidhi Stalin, grandson of MK Karunadhi, former Tamil Nadu chief minister. Since, the vehicle was not in the house, the team returned without conducting any search,” the CBI note to the prime minister claims.

“Similar team was sent to the farm house of Alagiri, former union minister, to identify an imported car used by his son, but it returned without carry out an search, as no car was present there in the farm house,” the note added.

@pradiprsagar