Tehelka taint sticks on Home Ministry staffer

The fallout of the Tehelka expose on defence purchases has not just been limited to the Defence Ministry. Its aftershocks can still be felt ...

The fallout of the Tehelka expose on defence purchases has not just been limited to the Defence Ministry. Its aftershocks can still be felt in the Union Home Ministry, only that, it has adopted a more partisan line.

On March 31, the Home Ministry extended the suspension of Neeraj Kumar, a section officer of the North Division, by six months. Kumar had been suspended in 2001, along with Thomas Mathew, a director in the Ministry, for allegedly leaking documents to Tehelka.

Mathew was, however, reinstated soon after the UPA came to power. But the Home Ministry refused to budge from its stand on Kumar. And while the Ministry has at least come up with a chargesheet in Mathew’s case — for his alleged links with ‘‘suspicious’’ organisations — it has not issued any chargesheet to Kumar till now.

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Sources told Express that even the Home Ministry had during its review meeting in November decided to revoke Kumar’s suspension order. It was felt that both officials should get similar treatment as they were charged with the same offence. But this view was overturned in the last minute.

This was despite the CBI clean chit to Kumar. The agency, which probed the alleged leakage of documents to Tehelka, along with the IB, has stated that the document given to the news portal was an ‘‘academic paper’’ written by Kumar, consulting and collating information available in the public domain. The paper has been submitted to the Union Home Ministry, which has agreed to discuss it.