Court declines to extend CBI remand of Orissa HC ex-judge

A local court on Monday rejected a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) plea seeking custodial interrogation of retired Orissa High Court judge I.M. Quddusi and two others and remanded them to judicial custody.

The CBI told Special Judge Manoj Jain that it required three more days for further quizzing of Quddusi, B.P. Yadav and Biswanath Agrawala. But the court rejected the plea and remanded the three accused to 14-day judicial custody.

The probe agency also told the court that the accused was not co-operating in the investigation.

Quddusi, B.P. Yadav, Palash Yadav, Biswanath Agrawala and Ram Dev Saraswat were arrested on September 20 by the CBI on charge of helping an educational trust barred from admitting medical course students.

The sixth accused in the case, Bhawana Pandey, was arrested here on the next day - September 21.

The CBI had sought extension of custody on the ground that they were required to be confronted with each other to unearth the entire conspiracy and involvement of other public servants in the case.

The court also remanded the other three accused -- Palash Yadav, Saraswat and Pandey -- to 14-day judicial custody as the CBI did not seek their further custody.

All of them were presented on the expiry of their four-day CBI custody.

The agency had registered a case of criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the accused on September 19 and conducted raids at eight locations in Delhi, Lucknow and Bhubaneswar.

During the raids, including at Quddusi's residence in south Delhi's Greater Kailash area, the CBI seized Rs 1.91 crore, including Rs 1 crore from middleman Agrawala, and Rs 91 lakh from others.

The CBI FIR said B.P. Yadav and Palash Yadav were managing the Lucknow-based Prasad Educational Trust, which runs the Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences.

The institute is among 46 colleges barred by the government from admitting medical course students for two years (till 2019) because of substandard facilities and non-fulfilment of criteria.

--IANS

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