A Delhi court on Tuesday remanded Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s close aide and Delhi Government Principal Secretary, Rajendra Kumar, and four co-accused in five days’ police custody in a corruption case.
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The CBI had on December 14, 2015, registered a First Information Report against Rajendra Kumar on charge of abusing his official position in awarding contracts of the Delhi government to Endeavour Systems Private Limited. The CBI had first raided Kumar’s office at Delhi Secretariat in December past year.
Kejriwal had taken to Twitter and had said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “could not handle him politically” and that’s why he was resorting to “cowardice”.
“The CBI can not retain the documents in the garb of the argument that investigation is in progress without whispering the fact in what manner they are related to the present case (against Rajendra Kumar)”.
Sisodia claimed that the CBI could not produce “even a single proof in the court even to prove the authenticity of the raid”.
According to CBI sources, Ashok Kumar on Wednesday confessed to his involvement in accepting huge bribes. Along with Kumar, the CBI also arrested four other persons, in connection with a case regarding awarding of contracts to a private firm.
Meanwhile, as a rule, the Delhi government has suspended Kumar after the court ordered the latter to CBI custody for five days.
The arrests sparked off another round of confrontation between the Centre and the Delhi government with Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia alleging a conspiracy to “paralyse” the Kejriwal government.
The CBI told a special court that the arrested IAS officer was “intimidating” witnesses.
Not only this. Mr Sisodia said the AAP government had received an order earlier on Monday that transferred nine officers of the Delhi government.
Subsequently, the Delhi government had approached the courts for return of its documents.
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The CBI says that the firm was a front company which was started by Kumar in 2006. The contracts include a project for development of a comprehensive management system without any tendering process.
