The internal war of India’s national prove agency CBI turned extremely ugly on Monday after it carried out raids inside its own offices and arrested a senior investigating officer. The raids by the CBI inside its own headquarters were reportedly related to the case involving bribery charges against its Special Director Rakesh Asthana, reported Economic Times.
What compounded the embarrassment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to whom the CBI reports, was that the federal investigating agency also arrested one Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar. Kumar is accused of having recorded false statements to implicate CBI Chief Alok Verma.
Kumar, who was earlier the investigation officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, is believed to recorded the statement of Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case, they said.
A report by news agency PTI said that a statement of Sana was purportedly recorded on 26 September, 2018 by the investigating team headed by Asthana, but it emerged in the CBI probe that on that given day the businessman was in Hyderabad.
According to report filed by Kumar, Sana had reportedly said that he had discussed his case with Telugu Desam Party’s Rajya Sabha member C M Ramesh in June. Ramesh had allegedly said that Varma had assured him that he would not be summoned again. “From June onwards, I was not called by the CBI. I was under the impression that investigation against me is complete,” he is believed to have said. This, according to the CBI was complete lie and added in the report as an ‘afterthought’ to support the baseless allegations made by Asthana against Verma in his complaint to the CVC.
The CBI has said that it was also probing the role of other CBI officials, who may have been conduit in helping Asthana hatch a nefarious plan against his boss.
In an unprecedented development last week, the CBI had filed an FIR against Asthana for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 2 crore from Sana to give him relief in the matter.
Meanwhile, an embarrassed prime minister on Monday had reportedly summoned both Verma and Asthana, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer and close confidante of Modi. It’s also reported that the case against Asthana may be handed over to the Enforcement Directorate, which may probe the money trail against Rakesh Asthana.