The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) is poised to recommend departmental action against 30 station house officers (SHOs) across Kerala primarily on charges of having turned a blind eye to or actively collaborated with perpetrators of environmental crimes.

Investigators said individual officers who led the surprise inspections in 53 police stations would turn in their respective inspections reports to VACB Director B.S. Muhammad Yasin for action. He had ordered the checks, code-named Operation ThunderBolt, to expose the nexus between law enforcers and illegal sand, granite and earth miners. The inspection also focussed on detecting anomalies in police service delivery, including hiccups in processing various applications from citizens promptly.

The inspections also yielded significant amounts of unaccounted cash, gold ornaments, and in one case in Kozhikode, marijuana. Investigators said the gold was mostly recovered loot that had not been appropriately accounted or produced in court. The marijuana found inside the desk of a SHO was recovered from a drug-impaired youth.

The intelligence wing of the VACB had conducted a clandestine survey of police stations whose jurisdiction covered pockets of illegal sand and granite mining.

Operation Thunderbolt vindicated their inference that at many police station areas, law enforcers were hand in glove with the exploiters of natural resources.

For one, the VACB intelligence had flagged up the fact that certain officers regularly let off trucks involved in illegal mining operations without impounding the vehicles and handing them over to the district magistrate or Mining and Geology Department enforcers as mandated by law.

The intelligence had also pointed the finger at corruption in traffic police stations where officers sat on applications from citizens for accident occurrence reports to claim vehicle insurance.

Investigators also found that a large number of vehicles lying unattended around police stations had not been adequately accounted for.

The intelligence wing also pointed out that some SHOs accepted complaints from loan sharks without registering a case and used the petitions to pressurise debtors into repaying high-interest loans.

Mr Yasin is expected to vet the reports and finally submit his recommendations to the government.