Tension is brewing between a newspaper and an IPS officer from Telangana. This after the newspaper claimed to have accessed a report that makes serious allegations against the police officer.
In a piece for The New Indian Express on Thursday, Vikram Sharma reported that an enquiry by the Telangana State Intelligence Department had made several charges against IPS officer Tejdeep Kaur Menon, Director General, Special Protection Force.
Quoting the intelligence report, TNIE claims that Tejdeep was involved in misappropriation of funds meant for the Swachh Hyderabad programme and also harassed hundreds of Telangana SPF employees, including 32 posted at her house.
According to the report, these officers were allegedly used as "drivers, carpenters, cooks, attenders, gardeners and others."
The report also alleges that she showed favouritism to Andhra personnel, while also "deliberately delaying the process of distribution of SPF personnel between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh by refusing to relieve AP-native personnel."
Lastly, TNIE also reported that "a water tanker from the SPF academy, Ameenpur, makes 150 trips to Tejdeep’s residence every month and she was faking all bills."
Tejdeep was promoted to her present post in May last year. Before that, she had served as Additional Director General, (Sports), for the combined Andhra Pradesh Government.
She is known locally, for attempting to make the Ameenpur Panchayat, garbage-free, while also taking steps to clean the Ameenpur lake.
In a rejoinder to the TNIE report, Tejdeep issued the following statement:
"The allegations about internal organizational and resource matters of what is a security organization coupled with imputed motives of working against the interests of the Telangana state are tenuous and baseless...It is apparent that the report was written and published only to tarnish my name and reputation. The reports are highly slanderous and intended to malign the work that the TSSPF and I are involved in...The report is per se defamatory as it is a deliberate attempt to needlessly, or at the behest of some, to project me in the darkest light possible and to scandalize me in public and tar my reputation."
The News Minute reached out and spoke to both, the TNIE reporter and the IPS officer in question. Both of them assured that they would revert shortly, but did not.
The copy will be updated if and when they respond.