Balwinder set to land plum job in CBI

HYDERABAD: Senior IPS officer Balwinder Singh, considered close to the powers-that-be in New Delhi, will now investigate serious corporate frauds.Singh, currently special director of the Central Bureau of Investigation at the CBI headquarters in Delhi, is retiring from service on December 31, and is all set to take up a key job in the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO).Sources disclosed to Express that Balwinder Singh, a 1976 batch IPS officer of AP cadre, has been picked up for the job by none other than minister of corporate affairs M Veerappa Moily whom Singh is understood to have met recently.It is learnt that a group of top bureaucrats in Delhi and some politicians have pitched for Singh which got him the job. Formal orders posting Singh to SFIO are likely to be issued anytime in January.'It is still unclear what responsibility Singh will be given in SFIO. In all probability, he may be accomodated in the investigation wing,' sources said, adding that accommodation of retired IPS officers in SFIO was unheard of.Farewell in Hyderabad: Balwinder Singh, who hails from Ludhiana in Punjab, arrived at Hyderabad this morning to attend a farewell function organised by the local unit of the CBI. Singh, who was earlier in the race for the post of CBI director soon after the retirement of Ashwani Kumar in November 2010, missed the bus narrowly when the Union law ministry said that only officers of the batches of 197275 would be considered for the post of director. While working as the Hyderabad police commissioner, the Mecca Masjid bomb blast and twin blasts at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat here took place.The city police had come under severe criticism for allegedly torturing innocent Muslims in connection with the blasts for which chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy apologised to the community recently.After his transfer to the CBI as additional director, Singh was looking after the economic offences and bank securities fraud divison. Simultaneously, he was supervising the Mecca Masjid blast and it was then that the role of alleged Hindu fundamentalists surfaced and arrests followed.After promotion as special director of CBI, he has been supervising the investigation into the alleged illegal assets of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, Emaar scam and the illegal mining case involving Gali Janardhan Reddy.

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