From Abu Salem to Mayawati

BACKSTAGE

The 45 year-old Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) 24th Director Ashwani Kumar is already at a disadvantage. At a time when politicians such as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati are accusing the CBI of being a political tool meant to bring the opposition to heel, the former Director General of Police (DGP) in Himachal Pradesh was made CBI chief after a last-minute instruction from the PM’s office ensures he supersede CBI Special Director ML Sharma — Sharma has since then gone on long leave. Given how patchy the CBI’s record is when it comes to both political and high profile cases, including terrorist blast ones, Sharma will have to do some pretty neat work to overcome the accusations. For the record, the agency’s website claims that its overall ‘success’ ratio is around 68 per cent, though this includes only those cases, mostly non-political, where judgements have been delivered by the courts — it does not include cases where the CBI has begun investigation but has not proceeded to court with.

Though you’d never think of the DGP of a state like Himachal Pradesh as the ideal contender for the head of an agency whose latest job is to solve the recent terror attacks on Indian cities including the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad (May 2007) and the Mumbai serial train blasts (July 2006), the 57-year old much-decorated Kumar is no pushover either. He’s served in the CBI for six years, has been deputy director and assistant director in the Special Protection Group (that’s how he’s supposed to have caught late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s eye), and has been awarded the Indian Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 1989 and the President’s Award for Distinguished Service in 1999. He has also received a Special Duty Medal with Bar for his work in 1979 and 1980 and has won appreciation, the CBI website says, from the prime minister and the home minister. Sharma was also closely involved in the extradition of gangster Abu Salem and his girlfriend Monica Bedi from Portugal during his last tenure with the agency.

Known as a cop who is brimming with ideas and has an eye for detail, Kumar’s journey to the top began in a tiny hamlet in Sirmour, a backward district of Himachal. Not surprisingly for a man who has both an MBA as well as a post-graduate degree in defence studies, Kumar tried to change the way things got done when he was the top cop in his home state. His plans to transform the police included not just exchanging the drab khaki for a smarter dark-blue trousers and sky-blue shirt (Goa is the only other place in India that has done this) but also looking at different ways to pick and promote officers. Kumar was, an old colleague says, the first head of police to introduce an IQ test for policemen during recruitment. In between, Kumar found the time to trace antique idols which had gone missing from the Kinnaur temple to an international gang of smugglers.

Kumar will need all his skills and a lot of luck to do justice to his new job which is getting tougher by the day — the serial blasts in recent weeks are evidence of this. More than this, he will have to demonstrate that he is not a political tool (that means appearing to pursue the case against the UPA’s latest ally, Mulayam Singh Yadav). All this while fighting to ensure the CBI doesn’t get turfed out as the government debates the setting up of a new federal investigative agency to exclusively tackle terrorism.