Minutes after former Enforcement Directorate (ED) Joint Director Rajeshwar Singh announced on January 31 that he was taking the political plunge after his voluntary retirement from the agency, a montage video of Singh went online. In the video, Singh is seen praying to Lord Shiva, walking in a park in slow motion, reading a newspaper and engaged in an intense discussion — all this while the score of S S Rajamauli’s brawny epic Bahubali plays in the background. The video was retweeted by his sister Abha Singh with the comment: “Here comes #Rajeshwar Singh ex ED”.
This unmistakable strongman image has often been associated with Singh’s career —be it during his stint with the Uttar Pradesh Police or the country’s premier anti-money-laundering agency.
In his decade-long career as a police officer in UP — from 1997 to 2007 — Singh, now 48, cracked down on mafia gangs in Lucknow and Allahabad, with the high point of his career being the arrest of strongman Atiq Ahmed. A recipient of the police medal for gallantry, Singh has close to two dozen encounters to his name — this, many would argue, sits at odds with his law degree and doctorate in human rights from Delhi University.
An alumnus of IIT, Dhanbad, Singh operated in the ED — which he joined in 2007 as an assistant director — with no less swagger. From the Madhu Koda case to the Sahara case, from 2G scam to the 2010 Commonwealth Games case, from the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy case to the coal scam cases,…
