Kerala govt constitutes SIT to probe alleged leak of CAG report's contents

The Kerala government has constituted a Special investigation team (SIT) to probe the alleged leak of the contents of the CAG report on 'missing' rifles and cartridges before it was tabled in the state assembly last month.

An order in this connection was issued by the Home department after getting a report from DGP Loknath Behera on the alleged leakage.

The state government had last month said that some contents of the CAG audit report, which had come down on the state police chief Loknath Behara, had allegedly been leaked even before it was tabled in the assembly on February 12.

The report had found that 25 INSAS rifles and over 12,000 cartridges were missing from the Special Armed Police battalion here and had criticised the state police chief for diversion of funds "flouting" guidelines.

A day before the report was tabled in the state assembly, Opposition MLA P T Thomas, had raised allegations similar to the ones in the report, prompting the ruling front to allege that the report had been leaked.

Chief Secretary Tom Jose had said there were doubts that even before the report was tabled in the assembly, some of its contents had come up in a section of the media.

In the name of CAG report, indulging in character assassination was not a good precedent, he had said.

The crime branch, which conducted a physical cross verification after the report came out, said no rifles were missing and only 3,000 odd cartridges were missing instead of the over 12,000 mentioned in the report.

The Opposition Congress had launched a direct attack against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, alleging that the serious corruption mentioned in the CAG report cannot take place without his knowledge.