The finance ministry has decided to stop transfers of all revenue service officers for the time being after the Central Bureau of Investigation recovered documents that could unearth more corruption cases involving tax officials who paid bribes to get favourable transfers.
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh on Thursday suspended the transfer order of 54 assistant and deputy commissioner officers. All further transfers have been put on hold till a systemic review is undertaken.
On average around 1,000 tax officials are transferred at this time of the year.
CBI Director P C Sharma is learnt to have disclosed this to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani Friday while briefing them separately about the case and the recoveries made from R Perumalswamy, personal assistant to Minister of state for Finance Gingee Ramachandran, and Chennai-based chartered accountant A Krishnamurthy, who were arrested yesterday for accepting bribe from revenue officer Anurag Vardhan.
The CBI also arrested Padmanabhan, a project associate at the Centre for Atmospheric Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
He had driven Perumalswamy to the residence of Vardhan and was allegedly present when the money changed hands. He was questioned for several hours before being placed under arrest.
A special court remanded two of the accused -- Perumalsamy and A Krishnamurthy -- to 10 days' police custody for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 400,000 to transfer Vardhan as deputy commissioner from Delhi to Mumbai. The court also remanded a co-accused in the case to CBI custody for four days.
While passing the order, Special Judge Prem Kumar said since it was a case of racket of transfers and postings of high-ranking officials by charging huge sums of money, involving even the personal assistant of minister of state for finance, it has wider ramifications.
The judge also observed that the searches conducted at several places in Delhi and Chennai were yet to be scrutinised and the entire conspiracy was yet to be unearthed. Some other finance ministry officials, said to be involved in the racket, are yet to be identified, he said.
Meanwhile, the minister made a brief appearance at his North Block office before leaving hurriedly from the rear entrance to the building. Ramachandran, who resigned this evening, said Perumalswamy alias Babu was his political appointment and had nothing to do with official files relating to service or other issues.
On the arrest of his personal assistant on allegations that he fixed transfers of officials for bribes, Ramachandran said Perumalswamy had misused his access to information and extracted money from gullible officials. He said that he is yet to see the Chennai-base chartered accountant.
"I hope CBI will bring out the truth quickly," he said adding he had never pressurised anybody for transfer of officials. Krishnamurthy was flown here tonight from Chennai and would be questioned by the CBI on Friday, sources said.