ABV denies charges, involvement of his son before COI 

VIJAYAWADA: Suspended IPS officer AB Venkateswara Rao, against whom the state government initiated a department inquiry following Supreme Court directions, on Sunday requested the Commissioner of Inquiries (COI) R P Sisodia to declare the articles of charge against him as “disproved” given his 30-year-long impeccable service record, compelling evidence of his son’s non-involvement in the procurement of equipment for intelligence department from Israel and the prosecution’s “blatant and criminal witness tampering, evidence manufacturing, forgery and suppression of facts”.

The State government in February last year placed the 1989-batch IPS officer under suspension for “endangering national security through his acts of treason” when he was the Intelligence chief during the previous Chandrababu Naidu regime. Following the Supreme Court orders, the CoI was constituted and he was asked to submit a report by April-end.

On the last day of inquiry, Venkateswara Rao, in his defense, said that when they wanted to acquire a proprietary web intelligence from an internationally reputed company in Israel, he decided to do it by the Intelligence department only and also convinced the Ministry of Home Affairs, got the funds, procured it and completed its acquisition, installation and training in six months. Rao said the Intelligence department made the procurement as he “realised the competence of the DGP office”, which failed to execute the ‘eye in the sky’ technology and aborted it mid-way. On the alleged involvement of his son’s start-up firm in the procurement, he said the official documents from Israeli sources obtained by the enquiring agency confirmed his son’s non-involvement in the procurement.

Rao said some of his colleagues and several state organs were intent on proving him guilty and they were not averse to fudge records, create false documents, register criminal case under the Prevention of Corruption Act, search his house and seize his laptop having all the data related to the inquiry, intimidate witnesses and thus send signals to him to either submit or be prepared for far worse consequences. On the Article of Charges, Venkateswara Rao said the charges are vague and not supported by any oral or documentary evidence and the chargesheet suffers from serious lacunae.