New Delhi: Taking strong exception to the face-off between the CBI director Alok Verma, and his deputy Rakesh Asthana, the Centre, in an extraordinary order late on Tuesday, appointed CBI joint director and Odisha cadre IPS officer M Nageswar Rao as the interim director of the central investigating agency while sending off the two top officials on leave.
Rao will “look after duties and functions of director CBI and shall take over the duties and functions with immediate effect,” said the order by an appointments committee led by the Prime Minister.
Following the order, Rao has superseded Asthana.
The developments followed a recommendation by the Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) KV Chowdary that the CBI’s warring top two be sent on “compulsory wait”, stripped of all responsibilities.
The unprecedented chaos had begun with Verma filing a case against Asthana accusing him of taking Rs 3 crore as bribe from a businessman being investigated. Denying the charges, Asthana had told the government that it was his boss who had taken a bribe of Rs 2 crore from the same businessman. He also sent a 50-page complaint against him and his team.
A 1986 batch officer, Rao was serving as the ADG, Railways, in Odisha prior to this appointment as the joint director of CBI.
A native of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, he had headed the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA). He was also the IG, CRPF, during the Kandhamal riots in 2008 and played a key role in diffusing the communal tension.
He has also served as the Superintendent of Police (SP) in four districts of Odisha — Mayurbhanj, Nabarangapur, Bargarh and Jagatsinghpur — as well as that of the Crime Branch.
Rao has also served as the head of the Odisha Fire Service and received a chief minister’s award for his work during cyclones Phailin (2013) and Hudhud (2014).
The IPS officer also earned accolades for the way he handled his first posting in Odisha’s Talcher, an area which is notorious for coal smuggling. He was the first officer in Odisha to use DNA fingerprinting to solve a rape case in Jagatsinghpur district in 1996.
