Centre removes ED director for transferring officer probing Mallya case

New Delhi: The Centre removed on Tuesday Indian Police Service (IPS) Officer Vineet Agarwal from the post of special director at the Enforcement Directorate (ED) after he landed himself in the middle of a controversy a fortnight ago for transferring the officer leading the probe against fugitive businessmen Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.

According to sources, Agarwal was transferred back to his original cadre. On March 29, Satyabrata Kumar, an ED joint director, was in London for a hearing in the Nirav Modi case, when Agarwal issued the controversial transfer orders. However, within few hours ED Director Sanjay Mishra had revoked Kumar's transfer, asserting that Agarwal was not authorised to take the decision against the joint director on his own.

The finance ministry issued an order on Tuesday after getting sanction from the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet and subsequently the ED headquarters in Delhi issued the orders relieving Agarwal from the post of special director of the agency in Mumbai.

As Mumbai special director, Agarwal headed ED's probes in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Agarwal is a 1994-batch IPS officer of the Maharashtra cadre and was appointed as special director in ED in January 2017 for five years.

The fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi is wanted for his alleged involvement in Rs 13,000 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) loan default case.

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