CBI arrests minister kin who is the daughter-in-law of finance minister K. Anbazhagan
TAKING STOCK: Regional Passport Officer, Chennai, Sumathi Ravichandran (left), along with Project Director, Ministry of External Affairs, K.N. Sharma (second right), and K. Asokan, Under Secretary from the ministry, on Wednesday inspecting the works for the Coimbatore Passport office. —
Businessmen, frequent travellers and film artists stand to benefit
Passport officer held in city for taking bribe
25 Apr 2009, 1717 hrs IST, A Selvaraj & Jayaraj Sivan, TNN
CHENNAI: The anti-corruption branch of the Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday arrested Sumathi Ravichandran, Chennai regional passport officer (RPO), for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs 9,000 from a passport applicant through a tout — a travel agent in T Nagar.
Her husband, R Ravichandran, a health officer in Chennai Corporation, was arrested on Saturday for engaging the touts. Two touts — Fathima Muzaffar, director of Ahmed World Travels and daughter of former IUML MP Abdul Samad, and Raju, owner of Raja Travels in Triplicane — were also arrested. A case was registered under Sec 120B (criminal conspiracy) and Sec 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
Sumathi and Fathima were produced before K Naganathan, principal special judge for CBI cases, at his residence on Saturday and remanded in judicial custody. Sumathi told the judge that the case was foisted against her, and requested that she be admitted to a hospital as she was suffering from severe back pain. However, the judge said adequate medical facilities were available at Puzhal prison. Ravichandran and Raju are yet to be remanded. Raju was arrested by the city police last year in a fake passport case.
Following Sumathi's arrest, CBI sleuths raided her residence at Aspiran Garden in Kilpauk and seized Rs 5 lakh cash, documents pertaining to immovable properties worth Rs 1 crore, bank deposit receipts for Rs 4 lakh and documents pertaining to investments in shares, mutual funds and insurance policies in her name and those of her family members. From a locker maintained in a family member's name, officials seized 92 sovereigns of gold jewellery.
Passport officer held in city for taking bribe
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Comment: Shame on Indian Postal Service, IAS and IFS fratenity. Only 1% are proved to be corrupt and rest 90% of corrupt civil services officers remain under powerful influence to safeguard their anti- national activities. Now one knows how smugglers, terrorists, frequent travellers and hawala operators have multiple passports to proceed to tax havens and swiss banks incognito. Tamilnadu government is known for streamlining corruption to perfection. Chennai is hub of Hawala transanctions worldwide fuelling terrorism. Chennai needs a surgical operation on the lines of Taliban to get rid of VIP and Political terrorism.
The Hindu, 30 April 2009 an update
Chennai Corporation Health Officer epicentre of TOUTS for Statewide illegal Passport Racket
Ms. Sumathi was arrested on April 25 in connection with a graft case. Based on further investigation, a case was registered against her husband and Senior Medical Officer on the Chennai Corporation, Ravichandran. Seizure of some documents by the CBI in his office and clinic revealed that Dr. Ravichandran was entertaining Passport agents and travel agents in his clinic at Purasawalkam.
Sumathi arrested in another case: Medical Doctor (spouse) pursuing criminal activities- a deadly duo
Congratulations pour in for CBI through SMS for nabbing RPO
"We have recovered the coded slips issued by Sumathi's husband Dr Ravichandran based on which some tatkal passports were issued. In most of the slips, he has written as "good", "fresh" and "new", which could be code words. We have collected the samples of the hand writing of Ravichandran to compare with the slips we have recovered. These will be sent to forensic department for test," a senior CBI officer said.
CBI to review all 85,000 tatkals Passport issued
Volume of Black money generated in processing 85,000 Tatkal Passports
Simple maths: Rs 9000 x 85,000= Rs 765,000,000 which works out to whopping 76.5 crores or $ 15.3 million. Surely the greater chunk of money would have been invested in safe tax haven- like Swiss Banks. Now the task of CBI should be to bring the culprits to book and not be influenced by tainted Politicians who would use their power to soft pedal the issue! Kudos to CBI... Keep the Nation free from Hawala operators and Terrorists. War on terror must be combated from all angles.
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