NEW DELHI: The CBI on Wednesday raided 18 places across the country in connection with the alleged corruption in executing various development projects at the Chaudhary Charan Singh (CCS) International Airport in Lucknow during the 2007-08 period.
The premier probe agency has booked one officer of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and two former AAI officers and a proprietor of a Delhi-based firm.
Senior manager in AAI New Delhi office Anupam Verma, former senior managers with AAI’s Lucknow office Pawan Kumar Jain and Alokesh Biswas and Sumit Ghosh, proprietor of Ghosh and Associates in Delhi, have been accused of causing a loss of `one crore to the AAI.
The investigation agency booked the accused for criminal conspiracy and forgery under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and also for criminal misconduct and obtaining valuables by corrupt means under relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
It is alleged that the accused inflated the estimated costs of two civil projects — expansion and strengthening of apron and construction of a new taxiway and works on a new integrated passenger terminal building — at the CCS airport. They allegedly took into consideration inflated rates of cement for making estimates and mentioned exorbitantly high base price of cement in the tender document, prepared on the basis of fake quotations.
Thus the tenders with inflated estimated cost were floated and works awarded to some private contractors in Agra and Delhi for exorbitant rates, causing a loss of around `one crore to the AAI.
The CBI registered a complaint on the issue on September 17, 2010, following which a probe was launched.
On Wednesday, the probe teams raided residential and official premises of the accused AAI officials and private contractors. Raids were conducted at eight places in New Delhi, two each in Lucknow and Ghaziabad, four in Agra and one each in Kolkata and Hyderabad.
The agency also seized a large number of incriminating documents pertaining to the project.
More names, of private individuals and public servants, are likely to surface in the case soon.