The plot thickens

A.K. Bassi. He was looking into the bribery charges against Asthana, but was transferred to Port Blair.

The sequence of events in October leading to the upheavals in the CBI involves issues ranging from corruption and hawala transactions to political patronage and cover-up. A high point in this course of events was when a CBI team conducted raids within its own headquarters and arrested Deputy Superintendent of Police Devinder Kumar in connection with bribery allegations involving CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana.

Following this, in a midnight drama in which the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) apparently called the shots directly, major changes were made in the CBI and the top officers of the agency were sent on leave. This midnight action of October 24 was apparently preceded by a meeting between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval at the Prime Minister’s house. Shortly after midnight, the police cordoned off the CBI headquarters. The leave order was issued at 1.45 a.m., and around 2 a.m., the police escorted CBI Joint Director M. Nageshwar Rao to the CBI headquarters and he took over as interim CBI Director. The first thing he did was to remove officials who were investigating a case involving Asthana. Rao is the first Inspector General-level official ever to be chief of the CBI.

At 7 a.m., the offices of Alok Verma, CBI Director, and Asthana were sealed and both were stopped from entering the building and their drivers were withdrawn. They were sent on leave by the Central Vigilance Commission and the Central government and were informed of their leave only in the morning. A team of officers working under Asthana was shunted out. Officer A.K. Bassi, who was looking into the bribery charges against Asthana, was transferred to Port Blair.

Asthana is reportedly close to both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. He headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Gujarat Police that probed the 2002 Sabarmati Express fire and the 2008 serial blasts of Gujarat. He arrested Lalu Prasad in 1996 in the fodder scam case and won the praise of the BJP, then in the opposition. As soon as the NDA came to power in 2014, he was brought to New Delhi and posted in the CBI. He was reportedly hand-picked by the PMO to head the CBI for a few months in 2016-17 when there was a delay in appointing a full-time Director. It was only when the Congress objected to it that a fresh panel of officers was created from senior batches and Alok Verma was appointed. But Verma is set to retire in 2019 and Asthana was being considered as the man Modi would like to install in his place.

At the core of the conflict within the CBI is the meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi’s case. Qureshi has been accused of tax evasion, hawala transactions and acting as a conduit between some CBI officers and a few high-profile people accused in some cases. On October 15, Hyderabad-based businessman Sathish Babu Sana filed a first information report (FIR) against Asthana, CBI Information Officer Devinder Kumar, and Somesh Prasad and Manoj Prasad, sons of a former director of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), that they had harassed him and demanded a bribe of Rs.5 crore. Sana was a witness in one of the cases pertaining to Qureshi. According to his complaint, he was frequently sent notices and summoned to the CBI office in Delhi by Kumar. In every meeting, he was repeatedly asked about his relationship with Qureshi.

Sana had invested Rs.50 lakh in Qureshi’s company, Great Height Infra, and had apparently produced his income tax returns regarding the same. But Kumar apparently told him that he had made a payment of Rs.50 lakh to Qureshi in another case, which he repeatedly denied. This continued through October-November 2017. According to him, to get relief from frequent harassment and “mental agony” and to be exonerated in the case, Sana agreed to pay up to Rs.5 crore through the Prasad brothers in Dubai to the CBI as bribe in tranches. He made a part payment of Rs.2.95 crore in December 2017, but the notices and summons continued. On September 24, 2018, when Sana was going abroad, the immigration office stopped him at Hyderabad. Subsequently, Kumar called him on October 1 and 3. Apparently faced with continuous harassment, he recorded his statement with the Magistrate Court regarding the entire matter. He claimed he had again paid Rs.36 lakh in October to get relief from further appearance. Manoj was caught on October 16 when he came to India from Dubai to allegedly receive Rs.1.75 crore, the last tranche of the bribe.

On October 22, the CBI released a statement with the above-mentioned facts to clear the air of misinformation around the case. On the basis of Sana’s allegation, Verma launched an investigation against Asthana. Asthana, in turn, launched an inquiry into the bribery allegations against Verma, which led to raids in the CBI headquarters.

The CBI statement said that the allegations that the CBI Director was not aware of the lookout circular (LOC) issued against Sana were incorrect as “the DCBI had seen and ratified the proposal to issue LOC on May 25, 2018”. It also said that the allegations that the CBI Director had made an attempt to stop the arrest of Sana were false and malicious. “The allegation was made to deflect the charge of receipt of bribe money by CBI Special Director Shri Rakesh Asthana and the other public servant named in the FIR. The case against the public servants relates to transactions beginning in December 2017, in a case registered in Feb[ruary] 2017, whereas the arrest proposal was moved only on 12.09.2018,” said the CBI in the statement.

On October 30, Bassi, who was entrusted with the case registered by Sana, moved the Supreme Court to quash his transfer and sought an SIT probe in Asthana’s case. His petition carried details about the nature of the complaint against Asthana. He referred to alleged phone intercepts where one of the accused is heard as saying, “ Asthana toh hamara aadmi hai [Asthana is our man].”

In his petition, Bassi claimed that Sana had revealed shocking details of alleged corruption and illegal gratification by Asthana in collusion with other co-accused Somesh and Manoj Prasad, and other unknown accused persons. Bassi’s petition also said that after Manoj was detained, his brother Somesh spoke multiple times with RAW Special Secretary Samant Goel, who, in turn, spoke to Asthana several times. His petition mentioned alleged call records of the conversation between Goel and Somesh where the former is advising the latter not to come to India at any cost.

Bassi expressed his apprehension that all the pieces of evidence, which were with the CBI, might be tampered with or destroyed. In his petition, he said the actions of Satish Dagar, who was entrusted with the investigation after he was transferred, created the fear that he might have been instructed to ensure that Asthana was ultimately provided a clean chit. He also said that he feared that his life, liberty and dignity were under threat from vindictive and vicious officials.

A bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices U.U. Lalit and K.M. Joseph agreed for an early hearing of the case. It directed the Hyderabad Superintendent of Police to provide protection to Sana but rejected his plea to depose directly before retired judge A.K. Patnaik and instead asked him to appear before the CBI. The legal procedures are expected to resume in early November.