Gun-licensing racket: CBI searches premises of two senior IAS officers; 17 locations raided

The CBI on Monday carried out searches at 17 locations in the new Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and three states, including the premises senior IAS officers Yasha Mudgal and Kumar Rajeev Ranjan, in two cases related to an alleged gun-licensing racket unearthed by Rajasthan Police in 2017, officials said.

This is the first major operation of the agency in Jammu and Kashmir after the reorganisation of the erstwhile state as a Union Territory under which the CBI gets jurisdiction to operate there under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, they said.

The announcement about the state being bifurcated into UTs -- Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir -- was made on August 5 by the central government and it came into existence on October 31.

Giving details, the CBI officials said several documents related to the cases, including bank statements, were recovered during the searches that were carried out at three places in Kashmir, 11 places in Jammu and one each in Gurugram (Haryana), Mohali (Punjab) and Noida (Uttar Pradesh).

Besides searching the premises of Mudgal, a 2007-batch IAS officer, and Ranjan, a 2010-batch IAS officer, houses of Itrat Hussain, Mohammed Saleem, Mohammed Junaid Khan, F C Bhagat, Farooq Ahmed Khan and Jenhagir Ahmed Mir were searched, the officials said.

Mudgal is at present CEO-and-Managing Director of Power Distribution Corporation Jammu, while Ranjan is CEO of Jammu Srinagar Metro Rail Corporation