Chennai
The report alleges that many senior officials consider this amount as an ‘additional salary’ and use it for personal reasons. According to highly placed sources in Tamil Nadu police, more than Rs 75 lakh is provided annually to the intelligence wing alone. The district police heads and City Commissioners also get additional amount as secret service funds, without even being given a brief as to how this amount is meant to be spent.
A senior police official told DT Next, “Provision of secret service funds to the intelligence department can be justified to an extent. Although most of the amount is siphoned off for personal use rather than cultivating sources. Only some agencies do justice to the funds and pay their informers. But it is unclear why such an amount is being provided to district SPs and City Commissioners of Police as they are not involved in the cultivation of sources.”
As per sources, police intelligence inputs are mostly provided by former convicts and most of the work is done through coercion and not through payment. “Except for a handful of cases, no money is paid to the informer. Police informers offer tip-off due to the fear of being harassed. What officials do with the secret service funds is known in the department,” a personnel said.
Informers offering tip-offs primarily in narcotic and smuggling related cases are the ones who get paid. But for this, the government itself had allocated a percentage of the value of the contraband seized as a reward for the informer. So, secret service funds are not used in such cases too, the source adds.
A retired police official who served in police intelligence said, “Most officials who receive this amount every year, consider it as a bonus. It is high time the allocation of these funds is reviewed. Since it is unaudited, officials are free to use the funds as they wanted, with no questions being asked.”
Sources said that the pressure on Tamil Nadu DGP is now mounting to look into the matter of large-scale diversion of secret service funds. Plans are also on the anvil to reconsider the list of beneficiaries of this fund and to limit allocation only to the intelligence agencies.
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