Graft case: CBI opposes bail pleas of 2 accused

The CBI today opposed before a court here the bail pleas of two persons arrested in a graft case involving Delhi CM's former Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar, saying allegations against them were serious and they cannot claim parity with Kumar who was recently granted the relief.
Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar heard the arguments on the bail applications of Kumar's close aide Ashok Kumar and Managing Director of a PSU R S Kaushik and reserved the order for August 1.
The bail plea moved by both the accused persons on the ground of parity with Kumar, who was granted bail on July 26 by the court, was today opposed by the probe agency.

While opposing Ashok's application, the agency said that his offences were serious as he was working on behalf of Kumar and was a connection between him and private firm, Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd (ESPL).
The agency had earlier claimed that ESPL was floated by Kumar for the award of government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore.
Regarding Kaushik, who is Managing Director of Delhi government undertaking Intelligent Communication Systems India Ltd (ICSIL), the CBI alleged that he was responsible for giving contracts, on Kumar's behalf, to ESPL.

It also said that for this purpose, Kaushik manipulated the terms and conditions of the tendering projects with the sole purpose to benefit the firm.

The court had earlier sought CBI's response on their bail pleas while issuing notice to the agency.
Besides Kumar, Ashok and Kaushik, the CBI had also arrested former Deputy Secretary in Kejriwal's office Tarun Sharma and Kaushik's predecessor G K Nanda.
The five accused were arrested on July 4 in connection with the case of allegedly showing undue favours to a private company in award of government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore.
CBI had registered a case against Kumar and others in
December last year alleging that the officer had abused his official position by "favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders of Delhi government departments".

The accused have been charged under section 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act relating to criminal misconduct for allegedly favouring ESPL in bagging of five contracts.
CBI has alleged that the accused persons had entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused a loss of Rs 12 crore to the Delhi government in award of contracts between 2007 and 2015, and claimed that the officials had taken "undue benefit" of over Rs three crore while awarding the contracts.
This is the same case in which the agency had come under scathing criticism from court which had directed it to return documents sought by Delhi government seized during December 15, 2015 search of Kejriwal's office.

Arrest of the top state government official had triggered a political storm with the Delhi government accusing Centre of indulging in "political vendetta" and "paralysing" governance.