Karnal Singh ensured Chidambaram was named in Aircel-Maxis charge-sheet

In what was possibly the last act of Enforcement Director Karnal Singh before retiring, he ensured that the agency filed the charge-sheet in the Aircel-Maxis case and named senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram as accused number 1 in the case.

There was a lot of speculation that the Enforcement Directorate ( ED) would not be “allowed” to file the charge-sheet in the case as it was under a lot of pressure from various quarters to delay the same. The Supreme Court had given it three months’ time to file the charge-sheet.

However, the agency did so on 25 October, almost two months before the 20 December deadline, to make sure that the proceedings in the case were not delayed even if Singh was no longer a part of the department, according to official sources. “There is nothing more that the agency can do in the case. Now, all the evidence is before court,” they added.

The investigation in the case was being conducted by ED Joint Director Rajeshwar Singh, against whom multiple petitions were filed to get him removed from the case by discrediting him. Rajeshwar Singh had written a letter to Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia in June accusing him of not supporting him and rather standing by corrupt individuals. Later, he withdrew the letter and apologised for it.

Earlier in April, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had received a complaint from an RTI activist against Rajeshwar Singh and his brother, a 1988-batch senior official with the Income Tax Department who is presently posted at Surat in Gujarat, of amassing properties in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Mumbai. The PMO had in