Court sends alleged middlemen to JC in bribery case

A man who claimed to be an official of the Prime Minister's Office was today sent to judicial custody for 11 days by a special court in a bribery case involving suspended Principal Secretary of Chhattisgarh B L Agrawal.
Special CBI judge Virender Kumar Goyal sent the alleged middleman, Syed Burhanuddin, along with his associate Bhagwan Singh, to Tihar Central Jail till March 17.
The court passed the directions after the CBI said their further custodial interrogation was not required.
The court had on March 3 sent Agrawal and his relative Anand Agarwal to 14-day judicial custody.
The CBI has alleged that the 1988-batch IAS officer wanted to "settle" an ongoing CBI probe against him.

It had claimed that the officer was facing investigation in two cases registered in 2010, when he was the health secretary in the Chhattisgarh government. He has been chargesheeted in one case while the probe was going on in the other.

The agency has alleged that the officer had approached Singh, a resident of Noida, who took him to Burhanuddin to get a graft case "settled".
Burhanuddin, who had many aliases, had claimed he was working in the PMO and would help him settle the case in his favour. Burhanuddin aka O P Singh aka O P Sharma had demanded Rs 1.5 crore as illegal gratification for his services, the CBI FIR alleged.

At a meeting between Agrawal, Singh and Burhanuddin on February 11, the officer had agreed to pay the amount to get relief in the cases against him, it alleged.
The CBI had added that Agrawal sent Rs 60 lakh in four instalments to Bhagwan Singh using hawala channel. As the bureaucrat was unable to arrange cash for the remaining payment, Burhanuddin and Singh agreed to accept two kgs of gold as illegal gratification, the FIR alleged.
The agency has registered a case of criminal conspiracy under the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act against the accused.