NEW DELHI: A city court sent Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s principal secretary Rajendra Kumar and four others to five days Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody on Tuesday in connection with an alleged corruption case of showing undue favours to a private company to award government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore.
The court issued an order after a lengthy argument where it was alleged by one of the accused that probe agency is used as a "political tool" whereas other accused said that he was pressurised to become approver in the case.
Special Judge Arvind Kumar allowed the agency to question Rajendra Kumar, former assistant director of VAT department Tarun Sharma, Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd directors Sandeep Kumar and Dinesh Kumar Gupta and a fifth man, Ashok Kumar, till July 10. “Keeping in view the facts and circumstances and submissions made by the parties, I deem it appropriate to grant five days police custody remand of the accused persons,” the court said.
The agency, which had arrested all the five accused on Monday, sought 10 days custody saying it had to probe the money trail and confront the accused with one another. The defence counsel opposed the plea.
The agency had on December 14, last year had registered a FIR against Rajendra Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS officer, for allegedly abusing his official position in awarding contracts from the Delhi government to Endeavour Systems.
CBI alleged that Kumar, who is still holding a high post, can tamper evidence and influence witnesses and the prosecutor V K Sharma said that a thorough investigation of accused persons are required in the custody. The CBI counsel further accused the Delhi government of creating hype in the media after the Kumar's arrest.
CBI called the Kumar as the brainchild of the firm Endeavour Systems, which was denied by the Kumar's defence counsel and senior advocate Mohit Mathur stating that there was not a single paper on record which established relation with the other private person.
Defence counsel Mathur said that CBI could not prove wrongful gains even in seven months of investigation and his client Kumar has joined the investigation whenever required and claimed allegations are false.
Another accused Dinesh Kumar told court that CBI has pressurised him to become approver in the case. Dinesh said raids were conducted on all the places of accused and documents lad already been seized by CBI. He had already joined the investigation and there is no ground for grant of police custody.
In the meantime, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia lashed out at the central government over the recent transfer of eight DANICS officers from Delhi saying “Centre wanted to run a parallel government in the national capital”.
“The central government wants to bypass the elected government of Delhi and run the parallel government through undemocratic means. Modiji claims that he believes in federalism. But is this how you run a federal government by weakening the state government and raiding the chief minister's office,” Manish Sisodia said.