Former Ministry of Home Affairs official R V S Mani, who had signed two contradictory affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan case in 2009, has applied for voluntary retirement from service (VRS).
Mani is now Deputy Land & Development officer in the Urban Development Ministry and has five more years in service. In his letter to Secretary Sudhir Krishna on Monday, Mani sought to be relieved of his duties at the earliest.
According to his lawyer K B Singh, at least six departmental case files were opened against Mani after he wrote a letter in June alleging pressure by Special Investigation Team officials who questioned him at Gandhi Nagar on June 22.
“He was issued a memo on August 7 and was being hounded for being upright and honest. Although he did not mention the reason in the letter seeking VRS, it is true that he is being harassed by the department,” Singh said.
Singh said Mani had conveyed that he would stand by whatever he told the SIT and perhaps that is why he is being “hounded by the government”. “They are going through files he earlier handled in the land and development office to harass him further. So he decided to quit,” the lawyer told Express.
Mani was grilled by the SIT on the two contradictory affidavits regarding the June 2004 killing of Ishrat and three others, which later triggered a tussle between the Intelligence Bureau and the CBI. In the first affidavit, the MHA gave a clean chit to Gujarat Police claiming that Ishrat was a terrorist, and opposed a CBI probe into the killings. In the revised affidavit filed in November 2009, the ministry took a U-turn and said a CBI probe may be ordered. During the questioning, Mani had refuted the SIT’s allegation that the first affidavit was drafted by former IB Special Director Rajendra Kumar. He told the SIT that he had drafted the affidavit with the help of Director, Internal Security and that the IB did not interfere in the process.