The Country's Premier Probe Agency CBI Is Recruiting Sleuths From Outside The Police Force

The Controller General of Defence Accounts where IDAS officers work, is responsible for financial advice, analysis and internal audit of defence services and departments. It not only oversees and audits accounts but also scrutinises and tracks the movement of large sums of money that defence functioning and purchases entail.   

An order issued on Monday (September 9, 2024) by the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), which administratively controls the CBI, said, “Approval of the Competent Authority is hereby conveyed for the induction of Shri Kamal Singh Chaudhary, IDAS: 2012, as Superintendent of Police (SP) in CBI for a period of four years from the date of assumption of charge to the post or until further order whichever is earlier.”  

On the 8th August this year, the DoPT issued an order inducting five Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers in the CBI. They included 2014-batch IRS officers Srishti Chaudhary, Navin Kumar Soni, Savyasachi Kimar and Sonawane Pankaj Rajaram. Another one from the 2016 batch was Rathod Kurnal Chimanbhai. They were all inducted as SPs in the CBI.   

Earlier in an order issued at the end of March, the DoPT had said that the selection committee of the CBI had approved the induction of six SPs, of whom four were not from the IPS.

The four officers included two from the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and one each from the Indian Telecom Service (ITS) and Indian Defence Account Service (IDAS).

One of the senior IPS officers in the CBI said the trend of inducting officers from other services is the beginning of full-fledged “lateral entry” into the central premier probe agency. He said so far there are more than a dozen non-IPS officers, who are in the CBI with supervisory powers.

The officer, on condition of anonymity, said that under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) or Bhartiya Nyaya Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), only a police officer can conduct investigations, arrest suspects, and carry a weapon without a licence.

The CBI technically qualifies as a ‘police station’, since it is an organisation where people can register criminal complaints. Therefore, the government has been notifying all officers of any service with police powers, as part of a policy decision.

However, there have been mixed reactions from serving and retired IPS officers, who were or are in the CBI, on the development. While a few of them welcomed the move to have experts from different fields in the agency, others emphasised the importance of having trained police officers conducting investigations of criminal cases.

If one goes through the CBI posting orders since 2010, it is found that the practice of inducting non-IPS officers in the premier central investigative agency began in a big way in 2014.

In May 2014, the government posted IRS officer Sanjiv Gautam as a DIG. Two years later, in September 2016, Sudhanshu Dhar Mishra, another IRS officer from the Income Tax Department, was inducted into the CBI as an SP on deputation. In 2017, Gautam’s tenure was extended and in 2021, Mishra’s extension was also approved.

In 2019, three more IRS officers were inducted as SPs in the CBI, followed by an Indian Audit & Accounts Service (IA&AS) officer at the same rank in 2021.

Giving the rationale for the move to induct non-IPS officers in the CBI, a senior official in the DoPT said the probe agency has been investigating many financial and bank fraud cases for which specific expertise is needed. “So, the government has taken a principled policy decision to bring in able officers from specific areas of operations and induct them in the CBI,” he said.