NEW DELHI: The Centre on Friday told the Supreme Court that controversial meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi and former CBI director A P Singh used to have daily coded conversation on issues related to helping out the accused in some cases as revealed by the report of the Income Tax probe.
Mentioning details of the I-T report, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi claimed that these details are only a trailer and the real movie is awaited. According to the AG, that Singh was now a UPSC member.
“The conduct of former CBI Director is wholly unbecoming of the Director and I am pained to say that,” the AG said and added, “I was pained when I read this”.
Rohatgi said that the Income Tax Department had raided Qureshi after his conversations with others were tapped and on the basis of the raid the appraisal report was prepared which is not a statutory document but an analysis.
“There is no conversation between Qureshi and the present CBI Director. There may be some innuendo referring to present CBI Director but there is no direct conversation,” the AG informed. The voluminous report was prepared on the basis of documents and material seized by the department and was placed in a sealed envelope.
A Bench of Justice Madan B Lokur, Justice Kurien Joseph and Justice A K Sikri said that it will go through the report and documents placed by the AG and hold the next hearing on December 8. The report was submitted after an NGO moved the SC seeking direction to the Centre to apprise it of the progress made by the I-T Department in its probe against Qureshi, whose name reportedly figured many times in the visitors’ register at the residence of CBI chief Ranjit Sinha.
The NGO, Common Cause, which is pursuing the coal block allocation scam in the apex court, filed an application that the appraisal report prepared by the Director General of I-T (Investigations) on the probe into Qureshi’s alleged hawala dealings be placed before it.
Qureshi is under I-T probe for his alleged hawala dealings. It had seized over Rs 6 crore in cash and sealed 20 lockers registered in the name of Qureshi’s employees during its first raid.