Asthana divested of all work, court bars arrest
UNDER THE LENS While the Congress has called for a probe, other oppn parties have blamed the govt for ‘sabotaging’ the agency
NEW DELHI: Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director Alok Verma on Tuesday divested special director Rakesh Asthana of all cases he is overseeing and recommended that he be transferred out of the agency, hours after the Delhi high court refused to halt an investigation against the latter that has turned out to be one of the most controversial chapters in the agency’s history, complete with a raid on its own headquarters and the arrest of a deputy superintendent of police (DSP).
Asthana, the second seniormost officer in the federal agency who has been accused of taking bribes, secured protection from arrest from the high court, which ordered a ‘status quo’ until the next hearing on October 29.
According to a CBI official who asked not to be named, Asthana will no longer be in charge of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) handling sensitive investigations like the AgustaWestland bribery case, the Vijay Mallya loan default case and the IRCTC landfor-contract case against Bihar politician Lalu Prasad.
The allegations against Asthana are part of an unprecedented feud within the agency between him and Verma, the agency’s top two officers. Asthana, the agency has alleged, took bribes to help a suspect, while Devender Kumar, the DSP, conspired with him to fabricate evidence in order to implicate the CBI director.
The agency told high court justice Najmi Waziri that more sections related to forgery and extortion were being added in the case against the special director and the DSP.
NEWDELHI:The Congress on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah of being responsible for “dismantling, denigrating and destroying” the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and demanded an impartial inquiry into the “entire mess” in the country’s premier probe agency.
A feud has erupted in the CBI, with its top two officials — director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana — accusing each other of corruption and impropriety. On Tuesday, Asthana approached the Delhi high court against the filing of a bribery case against him by the agency .
“Habitual misuse of CBI by Modi and Shah for fixing political opponents and illegal intervention to tamper with fair investigation of serious criminal cases has landed the investigation agency in an unfathomable mess,” Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala told a news conference in Delhi.He alleged that Modi’s role in the ongoing feud in the CBI was under a cloud, especially in the wake of the agency registering a corruption case against its special director Rakesh Asthana and raiding its own headquarters.The main opposition party also questioned what it called Modi’s move to “summon” CBI director Verma and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) chief Anil Dhasmana to his residence on Monday soon after the agency arrested its deputy superintendent Kumar in connection with the case against Asthana.
“Why did Prime Minister call them to his residence? Does it not tantamount to illegal and unconstitutional interference in an ongoing corruption investigation by the head of the state? Was it to influence the ongoing probe against CBI and RAW officers?” Surjewala asked.
The Congress demanded a “fair, impartial and independent investigation” into the allegations of corruption involving senior-most officers of the CBI and the R&AW.“There should also be an investigation to find out who in the current political dispensation was involved in the entire saga and is attempting to shield the accused involved in the matter,” Surjewala said.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokespersons weren’t immediately available for a comment on the allegations by the Congress.
In Mumbai, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said if the central government was “effective”, there would not have been bribery charges at the highest level in the CBI. “Still, the Prime Minister is silent. He should act,” he said.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the fact that the CBI was under the lens should not come as a surprise. Yechury said that a number of “compromised officials with dubious records” have been inducted into top agencies in the past four years.
“That is not just due to poor governance but due to malafide intention to target political opposition and save their own under investigation.”
The Samajwadi Party’s spokesperson, Abdul Hafiz Gandhi, said: “Infighting within CBI has further eroded the credibility of CBI as an institution. This is now crystal clear that present dispensation at the centre brought tainted officials to man
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CBI to pursue political vendetta against its opponents.” Devendra
There should be an investigation to find out who in the current political dispensation was involved in the entire saga RANDEEP SINGH SURJEWALA Congress’s chief spokesperson