JOIN USAnand Joshi, a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) official went missing from his home on Wednesday, the day he was to appear before Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a corruption case.
He left behind a note in which he said he was facing "mental harassment" and that he had made many enemies at work.
On Tuesday, he had accused senior MHA official B K Prasad of pressurising him to give a clean chit to some NGOs, including Ford Foundation, with regard to funding.
He claimed that he was told by Ford Foundation they could arrange funding of Rs 250 crore to any NGO he suggested, an allegation rejected as baseless by Ford Foundation.
Joshi was found missing from his residence in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad in the suburbs of Delhi early morning of Wednesday. He was last seen around 2 am when he went to bed, his wife Meenakshi Sharma said.
“When I woke up around 7.30 am, the main door was ajar and he was not there. I later found the note he left behind,” she said.
In the Hindi note addressing his wife, Joshi said, "I have been going through extremely high mental harassment for the past few months but now the situation has got out of hand. At this moment I need peace and that is not possible here.”
He said he was leaving home and asked her not to look for him. “You (Meenakshi) are now both a father and a mother to our children. The dedication and integrity with which I was serving the nation, I had never imagined that this would happen to me. While serving my nation, I have probably made too many enemies,” the letter said. The Police recorded Meenakshi's statement and took a copy of Joshi’s note.
Criminal conspiracy
The investigating agency had issued summons to Joshi on Tuesday, a day after it registered a case against him and unknown people under criminal conspiracy and relevant sections of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
Joshi was accused of indulging in corruption and arbitrarily issuing notices to large number of NGOs registered under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, who had been receiving significant amount of foreign contribution.