There is no link that the bribe money was paid to any CBI official and the series of transactions alleged by the investigating agency were neither supported by evidence nor was conclusive, the special court in Delhi has said while discharging three accused in a bribery case lodged against the CBI in 2018.
The Principal District and Sessions Judge-cum-Special Judge Vinay Kumar Gupta recently passed the order after going through all the submissions.
The mobile phones of many people including high ranking officers were illegally tapped without any approval or authority to the extent of compromising national security. The mandatory requirements laid down in rules of Indian Telegraph Act, 1985 have not been fulfilled and no reliance can be placed on the audio conversations contained in these calls. The mobile phone of Manoj Prasad was active for four days after his arrest.
Prasad owns two companies in the British Virgin Islands and has been booked by the CBI for alleged extortion. He arrested on October 17, 2018 and released on bail on December 18, 2018.
An FIR was registered against Prasad on October 15, 2018 on the complaint from Hyderabad-based businessman Sathish Babu Sana of Hyderabad.
Sana had given a complaint on October 4, 2018 on which FIR was not registered due to CBI’s inaction. Later, the complaint filed on October 15, 2018 against Prasad contained too much improvements as compared to the original complaint. Further there is no explanation for non-registration of the FIR on previous complaint but only on October 15, 2018.
The additions and substitutions suggest that the complaint dated October 15 is a result of a lot of deliberations, consultations, and discussions, which is quite significant in view of the fact that the complainant must have been in constant and regular touch with the CBI officers either in connection with meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi’s case or the present case.
Qureshi used to collect money from individuals directly or through Sana and used funds for “influencing investigation” by the CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had said after a probe in 2019. Qureshi was arrested in 2017.
Sana had later alleged that some CBI officials demanded bribe for favouring him in the case.
The CBI initially also named its own Special Director Rakesh Asthana, who later went on become the Delhi Police commissioner, and Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Devender Kumar in the bribery case in which an FIR was lodged in October 2018 at the instance of Sana.
The court, in March 2020, had said there was no sufficient evidence to summon Asthana and Kumar, CBI officials, in the case as the agency did not find sufficient evidence against them.
“On evaluating the entire evidence, the statements of witnesses and the documents, on record it is revealed that it is full of inherent contractions in the statement of the complainant, missing of crucial links and not corroborated from any other independent evidence making it to be inherently improbable,” the court said.
It further said in view of the various contradictory statements of the complainant himself, the inconsistencies and contradictions vis-a-vis other witnesses and documents placed on record what complainant has said cannot be accepted without any corroboration.
Special CBI Judge Vinay Kumar Gupta recently discharged the three other accused — alleged “middleman” Prasad, Someshwar Srivastava and Sunil Mittal — in the bribery case at the stage of framing of charges.
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