NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation has written to Delhi L-G VK Saxena seeking his sanction to register a case against former prison minister Satyendar Jain over allegations of extortion levelled by alleged conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar.
Besides Jain, the agency also sought L-G’s sanction to probe similar allegations against Raj Kumar, the then Superintendent of Central Jail No 4, Tihar. As per CBI, Raj Kumar was a close associate of the then DG Prison Sandeep Goel and aided him in extorting money from Chandrashekar.
Notably, the development came more than a year after The New Indian Express on November 1, 2022, exclusively published the story of Tihar inmate Sukesh Chandrashekhar writing a letter to L-G Saxena in which he levelled grave allegations of extortion against Goel and Jain.
The proposal sent by CBI to the L-G office, under section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, intended to conduct enquiry against Jain for allegedly extorting crores of rupees from various “high profile prisoners”, including Chandrashekar, to enable them to live comfortably in prison.
The CBI, while seeking the mandatory sanction from L-G to proceed against Jain, has alleged that “a high-level corruption and extortion racket” was running in the Delhi prisons in connivance with former DG Prison Sandeep Goel and former Additional Inspector General of Prisons Mukesh Prasad along with associate officers and accomplices.
The CBI, in its letter to Saxena, alleged that it has “source information” that former minister Jain allegedly extorted and received Rs 10 crore from Sukesh Chandrashekar in various tranches between 2018 and 2021, either himself or through his accomplices as protection money to enable the alleged conman to live a comfortable life in prison.
The probe agency claimed that the extortion was also carried out by Goel and Prasad from “other high profile prisoners lodged in jail as protection money” to allow them to live in jail safely and comfortably.
The CBI alleged that Jain, Goel, Prasad, and Kumar “misused their official positions” as public servants and “extended undue favour and advantage” to Chandrashekar and other high-profile inmates “in lieu of valuable considerations from the inmates”.
Chandrashekhar, in the past one year, has written multiple letters to the media and L-G Saxena in which he has alleged that he made payments not only to Jain but also to AAP to the tune of Rs 50 crore because he was promised an important post in the party in south India.
Receiving ‘threats’ from AAP, Sukesh tells L-G
In a recent letter to the L-G, Chandrasekhar claimed that associates of Kejriwal have been sending threats to his family, pressuring him to surrender the saved data and a pen drive to DIG Prison, Mandoli, or the jail officer. His letter said he is “in grave danger” as the threats to his family have not stopped even after complaints to the agency, saying “Now, I am being constantly threatened, pressurized by the jail officials.”Claiming he is “under huge risk for exposing and standing against Kejriwal and his associates”, Sukesh sought a transfer to jails outside the AAP government’s influence.
AAP denies charges, trains guns on BJP
AAP vehemently denied any association or transaction between Satyendar Jain and Sukesh Chandrasekhar, instead claiming that the BJP government is accepting statements by Chandrasekhar as the truth. AAP dared the Union government to launch a CBI investigation into the claims that Chandrasekhar extorted over Rs 200 crore from a business family in 2020 on instructions from Union Minister Amit Shah.