NEW DELHI, Jan 20: The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested two of its senior officers and an advocate allegedly for leaking classified inquiry information to the owners of two companies being investigated by the agency for bank fraud cases.
Official sources said on Wednesday that the CBI arrested its deputy superintendent of police (DSP) RK Rishi, Inspector Kapil Dhankad and advocate Manohar Malik in connection with its probe into “bribe-for-relief” scandal in the agency.
Rishi was accused of running a well-oiled racket in the central anti-corruption agency along with another DSP – R K Sangwan, Dhankad –stenographer Sameer Kumar Singh, and some lawyers for extending favours to private companies under investigation in bank fraud cases. The two officers were arrested on Tuesday night.
Crucial case related information and documents were allegedly being leaked since 2018 to individuals/companies being investigated for bank frauds, the sources said.
Rishi’s home in Deoband (Uttar Pradesh) and his wife’s residence in Roorkee (Uttarakhand) were also searched by a CBI team.
The agency has already established that Rishi had taken ₹30 lakh bribe in two tranches for facilitating the leak of information from the agency while Dhankad had taken around ₹25 lakh from two companies.
A case was registered last week naming four CBI officers – Rishi (deployed in CBI academy at Ghaziabad), Sangwan (DSP in Special Crimes Unit), Dhankad (Inspector in Bank Securities and Fraud Cell) and Singh (Stenographer in Bank Securities and Fraud Cell); lawyers Manohar Malik and Arvind Kumar Gupta; Mandeep Kaur Dhillon (additional director Shree Shyam Pulp & Board Mills Pvt Ltd) and Sujai Desai and Uday Desai of Mumbai-based company Frost International Pvt Ltd, who allegedly paid the bribes and sought inside information from CBI.
According to the FIR filed by the CBI in the case, the four CBI officers along with two advocates, and certain other accused have been “compromising the integrity of investigation of certain cases on extraneous pecuniary considerations”.
Both Shree Shyam Pulp & Board Mills Pvt Ltd (SSPBML) and Frost International are being investigated by the agency for defrauding banks. The case against Frost International was registered in August 2020 for cheating 14 banks of over ₹3,500 crore.
CBI FIR states that “in the case of SSPNML, RK Sangwan, who was the previous investigating officer in the case, offered and paid a bribe of ₹10 lakh in cash on behalf of Mandeep Kaur to Inspector Kapil Dhankad”. “On his part, Dhankad conveyed confidential information relating to the investigation of this case to RK Sangwan, with an intention to favour the accused,” the FIR states.
It is further alleged that Rishi paid ₹10 lakh bribe to Dhankad on behalf of Desais of Frost International. For facilitating the bribe, Rishi received ₹15 lakh twice through advocates Malik and Gupta to extend favours to a Chandigarh-based company against which a corruption case was being investigated by CBI, the FIR adds. “In this matter, Dhankad twice received ₹2.5 lakh from Gupta for having brokered the deal through Rishi,” reads the CBI FIR.
Rishi, Dhankad and Malik were produced before a court on Wednesday.
(Manas Dasgupta)