CBI nets two top officers for corruption

The CBI today arrested two senior All India Services officers for corruption.
B L Agrawal, a Principal Secretary in the Chhattisgarh government, was arrested for allegedly bribing people to help him wriggle out of corruption cases pending against him, while J P Singh, a former Joint Director of in Enforcement Directorate, was held for accepting illegal gratification to favour the accused in an IPL betting scam.
A senior IAS officer, Agrawal was arrested with his brother-in-law Anand Agrawal from Raipur, while an alleged middleman Bhagwan Singh was apprehended here, CBI sources said.
They said the CBI had seized two kgs of gold and Rs 39 lakh cash from the alleged middleman during search operations.

It is alleged that Agrawal, an IAS officer of 1988 batch, wanted to "settle" CBI cases against him which were lodged in 2010 when he was the state's Health Secretary.
He has been charge-sheeted in one case, while a probe is on in the other.

Agrawal, in a desperate bid to save himself, was alleged to have approached Bhagwan Singh, a Noida resident, who took him to Syed Burhanuddin. Burhanuddin, who claimed to be working in the Prime Minister's Office, assured him help.
Burhanuddin aka OP Singh aka OP Sharma demanded Rs 1.5 crore as illegal gratification for the services he promised to render, the CBI FIR has alleged.

The trio met on February 11 this year and Agrawal agreed to make the payment.
It is alleged that Agrawal sent Rs 60 lakh in four instalments to Bhagwan Singh using hawala channels. However, later he expressed inability to arrange cash for paying the remainder after which Burhanuddin and Singh agreed to accept two kgs of gold as bribe, the FIR alleged.
Agrawal asked his brother-in-law Anand to deliver gold to Singh, the CBI FIR alleged.
After registering a case under Section 120(b) of IPC relating to criminal conspiracy and provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act against Agrawal, Singh and Burhanuddin, the CBI launched search operations in various places.

"After registering the case, CBI carried out searches at the premises of accused persons and Hawala operators in Raipur, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Greater Noida. An amount of Rs 39 lakh (approximately) earlier delivered to private person (r/o Greater Noida) at New Delhi, has also been recovered during searches," CBI Spokesperson R K Gaur said.
After registering a case in September 2015, the CBI had
carried out searches at various places in Mumbai and registered a case against Singh in Ahmedabad.
Singh, who was then posted as Joint Director in the Enforcement Directorate, was later repatriated to his parent cadre and was currently Additional Commissioner (Customs and Excise Department) in the Northeast.

The CBI had said in the FIR that some ED officers while investigating the cases of money laundering in betting and other such activities had allegedly demanded and accepted "huge" illegal gratification from the accused and suspects.
The ED's Ahmedabad unit was probing the Rs 2,000 crore IPL betting scandal and Rs 5,000 crore money laundering case against alleged hawala operator Afroz Fatta in which the suspects allegedly sought favours from the officers, official sources said.
CBI claimed huge bribe was paid to these officers in return for favours.
After the ED Director received multiple complaints about the bribe demanded by the officers, he had forwarded those to the CBI for investigation.

The four were today produced before a court here which granted CBI their transit remand to enable it to produce them before a special court in Ahmedabad.