NEW DELHI: A Delhi court today sent Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's former Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar and six others, arrested in an alleged corruption case, to three-day CBI custody after the agency said they were needed to be confronted with each other.
Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar sent Rajendra Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS officer of UT cadre, Deputy Secretary in Kejriwal's office Tarun Sharma, Kumar's close aide Ashok Kumar and owners of a private firm, Sandeep Kumar and Dinesh Kumar Gupta, to the agency's custody after they were produced before it on expiry of their one-day judicial remand.
The court also sent R S Kaushik and his predecessor G K Nanda, present and the former Managing Directors of a PSU respectively, to three-day CBI custody on expiry of a day's judicial custody.
While Kumar, Tarun, Ashok, Sandeep and Dinesh were earlier in CBI custody for five days, the other two accused who were arrested on Saturday, were sent to the agency's custody today.
All the seven accused were yesterday produced before a magisterial court which had sent them to a day's judicial custody while asking them to be produced before the special CBI court today.
During the hearing today, the CBI told the court that it needed their custody as it wanted to confront the accused arrested earlier with those nabbed on Saturday.
The agency submitted that six more addresses were revealed during the interrogation of the five accused from where several more incriminating materials were recovered.
It claimed that during the search, a diary was recovered from which it came to the light that Rs 60 lakh cash was paid by one of the accused to acquire a flat for another accused.
"Fresh discoveries are likely to be made in the case... Huge illegal gratification was given to the accused company (Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd). We have the audio clips which connect of all the accused with each other," the CBI claimed. It also told the court that some of the accused persons were threatening the witnesses and asking them not to cooperate in the investigation.
Regarding Nanda, the agency alleged that he had entered into a conspiracy with other accused dishonest intentions.