4 IB men nabbed outside Alok Verma's residence

Four men from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) were on Thursday nabbed from outside the residence of Alok Verma, the CBI Director who was sent on leave a day ago over corruption charges.

The men were waiting outside Verma's 2, Janpath Road, official bungalow named as CBI House since Wednesday night.

They were intercepted and held by Verma's chief security officer, who found them sitting in two cars. They were caught on the allegation of snooping on Verma.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the IB has also been informed about the matter.

The four men after being handed over to the Delhi Police, identified themselves as Dheeraj Kumar, Ajay Kumar, Prashant Kumar and Vineet Kumar Gupta, all claiming to be IB officers.

Dheeraj and Ajay said they were junior officers while the other two claimed to be Assistant Content Officers.

The police have recovered identity cards and several mobiles phones from the suspects' possessions.

Meanwhile, the IB issued a statement saying the suspects did belong to the bureau.

"The IB is entrusted with the responsibility of collecting intelligence on situations that may affect, inter alia, public order and internal security. It's units are routinely deployed on a regular basis in sensitive areas.

"Since such officials are on routine duties, they carry their identity cards... One such unit, in early hours of today (Thursday), halted on Janpath, where there was an unusual collection of people.

"This was with a view to check the reason why people had collected at the location... This is a high security zone. Unfortunately, their presence was projected otherwise," the statement said.

A video showing the four men being dragged by Verma's personnel security officers has gone viral.

After a government order, Verma and his deputy Special Director Rakesh Asthana were divested from their duties on Wednesday amid an unprecedented feud in the agency as the two hit out at each other over bribery accusations in the meat exporter Moin Qureshi money laundering case.

--IANS

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