CBI books former ED official in pending graft case
NEW DELHI: A day after the CBI searched the premises of its former chief, the agency on Tuesday arrested former Enforcement Directorate (ED) Joint Director J P Singh for allegedly receiving bribe from accused persons of the IPL cricket-betting scam and diluting their charges under a money laundering case.
Continuing with its overdrive against powerful persons accused in corruption cases, the agency also arrested a senior serving IAS officer from Chhattisgarh on Tuesday. All these cases were put on the slow burner during the tenure of preceding CBI Director Anil Sinha. Recently, Alok Kumar Verma took over as the chief of the agency.
Singh, a 2000-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer was arrested along with three others including ED Enforcement officer Sanjay Kumar and bookie Vimal Aggarwal and middleman Chandresh Patel.
After registering a case on September 23, 2015, the CBI had conducted searches at various locations in Mumbai and Ahmedabad against Singh who later repatriated to his parent cadre. He is presently posted as Additional Commissioner (Customs and Excise Department) in Guwahati and will automatically be suspended from service following his arrest.
All the four were arrested here and produced before a designated court which granted transit remand till February 23 for their production before the designated CBI court in Ahmedabad.
The CBI had in its FIR alleged that “certain officers of Enforcement Directorate while investigating the cases of money laundering in betting and other such activities have allegedly demanded and accepted huge illegal gratification from the accused and suspect persons in the cases."
The ED's Ahmedabad unit was probing the Rs 2,000-crore IPL betting scandal, and the Rs 5,000-crore money laundering case against alleged hawala operator Afroz Fatta, in which the suspects allegedly sought favours from Singh, official sources said.
CBI claimed that huge bribe amount was allegedly taken by these officers as quid pro quo for various acts of omission and commission into the ED probe in the hawala and betting scandal cases.
Singh and others have been accused in the CBI case for 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and under various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The CBI case was registered after the Director of Enforcement Directorate forwarded to the former multiple complaints received by it from various persons regarding wrongdoings in ED’s zonal office in Ahmedabad.
The CBI on Tuesday arrested Principal Secretary in Chhattisgarh Government B L Agrawal and two others in a bribery case.
Agrawal, a 1988-batch IAS officer allegedly paid a bribe of Rs 1.5 crore to "settle" a CBI probe against him through the three conduits out of which two have been arrested.
Agrawal is facing CBI probe in two cases registered in 2010. Both the cases were registered during his stint as Health Secretary in Chhattisgarh government. While he has been charge-sheeted in one case, the CBI is continuing with its probe into the other case.