Just a day after Davidson Devasirvatham IPS was transferred and posted as Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Headquarters, Chennai, the Union Home Ministry has asked the Tamil Nadu government to take appropriate action against the officer over his alleged involvement in the fake passport scam.
Davidson was the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Intel and is said to have been appointed to the post at the behest of DMK chief MK Stalin’s son-in-law Sabarisan.
It was during Davidson Devasirvatham’s stint as state police intelligence chief that the Coimbatore car blast terror incident occurred outside the Kottai Easwaran temple in which one Jamesha Mubin died. The riots and arson in Kallakurichi in the aftermath of a school girl’s death too happened during his period.
Davidson is alleged to have been involved in the fake passport scam racket. Over 200 passports are believed to have been issued from Madurai to ineligible persons during Davidson Devasirvatham’s stint as the city’s Police Commissioner. The whereabout of these persons who had acquired the passport through fraudulent means remain unknown and difficult to trace. It is to be noted that only the documents which they had submitted were fake and not the passport itself.
BJP Tamil Nadu President K. Annamalai alleged that 74% of the fake passports issued were to Christian applicants. His wife who ran a passport agency allegedly closed down after the issue snowballed into a controversy. Annamalai also accused Davidson Devasirvatham of destroying evidence when he was the Madurai Police Commissioner.
In November 2020, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed at the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court by an advocate named Muruga Ganesan demanding a thorough probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the issuance of passports to ineligible persons.
The Advocate General representing the state submitted that 175 witnesses were examined, 22 were identified as accused of which 16 have been arrested.
Though the court had found it not necessary to transfer the case to CBI, a senior superintendent in the Regional Passport Office in Madurai named Veeraputhiran was arrested by the CBI in July 2021 for issuing Indian passports to foreign nationals including Sri Lankans who were brought by travel agents.
It was reported that Veeraputhiran entered into a criminal conspiracy with broker Ramesh and other travel agents operating in Madurai in 2019-20. While posted as granting officer at Passport Seva Kendra, Tirunelveli, Veeraputhiran had fraudulently issued Indian passports to Sri Lankans and other ineligible people in return for financial kickbacks from the travel agents, the CBI had stated in the FIR.
While senior officials at the Passport office and Department of Posts had granted the sanctions to prosecute the errant officials in their respective departments, sanction for Davidson Devasirvatham and other senior Tamil Nadu police officers were stuck in limbo for several months.
Read more about the case here.
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