ED officer probing NiMo case relieved...

...then reinstated within minutes; Enforcement Directorate HQ intervenes to overturn order divesting Satyabrata Kumar of his charge.

A controversy erupted on Friday after the main investigating officer (IO) in the Nirav Modi money laundering case was relieved of his charge by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the city – an order overturned by the agency headquarters in Delhi within minutes.

The order divesting Joint Director Satyabrata Kumar of the charge of the Mumbai Zonal Unit-I of the ED was issued by its top officer in the western zone, Special Director Vineet Agarwal, on Friday, when Kumar was in London for Modi’s bail hearing in the extradition case.

As soon as the news came out, sources said, ED Director Sanjay Kumar Mishra cancelled the order in Delhi and restored the charge to Kumar.

Kumar, an IRS officer of the Customs and Indirect Taxes service, was divested of his charge by Agarwal on technical grounds – per a rule that no IO can continue in one post beyond five years – and no order for his continuation had been issued by the ED HQ.

Special Director Agarwal, in his signed order, relieved Kumar from all the investigations, including the $2-billion PNB Bank fraud case against Modi, and handed over Kumar’s additional charge of to his immediate superior, the additional director (Western Region), who also sits in Mumbai.

The order, however, allowed Kumar to continue probing coal blocks allocation cases as he was appointed IO in this case by the Supreme Court, and no officer can be changed without the apex court’s permission.

Sensing the controversy being generated over the abrupt removal of the IO in the crucial Modi case, being monitored in the top echelons of government, the ED headquarters cancelled the order immediately.

The cancellation will be followed by an approval for an extension of tenure for Kumar, which has already been sent for clearance to the Department of Revenue under the Union Finance Ministry and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), sources said.

The ED also issued a clarification through its Twitter handle. “Certain media reports have been appearing that Joint Director supervising investigation in the case of Nirav Modi has been relieved. This report is not correct and denied,” it said.