CBI files FIR against special director Rakesh Asthana in bribery case

The Central Bureau of Investigation has booked its Special Director Rakesh Asthana in a bribery case. The Investigation agency has named him as an accused in an FIR filed last week. Asthana is no 2 in the CBI hierarchy.

According to media reports, the CBI has named him as the first accused for allegedly demanding and taking bribes from a businessman who was under investigation in the Moin Qureshi corruption case by a special investigation team headed by Asthana.

Beside, Rakesh Asthana, the FIR has also named Samant Kumar Goel, Special Director of India’s external intelligence agency (R&AW), but not as an accused.

According to sources, CBI has put telephone intercepts, WhatsApp messages, money trail and a statement before the magistrate under Section 164. Text messages sent to Asthana seeking a reaction went unanswered.

On September 21, CBI had said that it had informed the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) that it was probing Asthana in six different cases of corruption. The CBI has also said Asthana was maligning Director Alok Verma’s image and trying to “intimidate” officials by sending a “frivolous” complaint to the CVC against Verma.

Reacting to this, Asthana has written a complaint to the government against Verma, saying that the Director had sought to impede his functioning, interfere in investigations and malign his reputation.

The CBI moved against Asthana after the arrest of Dubai-based middleman Manoj Prasad on a complaint from Hyderabad-based businessman Sana Satish whose role was being scrutinised by the CBI SIT under Asthana in the Qureshi corruption case.

Qureshi was raided by the Income-Tax department in February 2014, and his BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) messages with former CBI Director A P Singh led to Singh’s resignation as member of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

After three years, a case was registered by the CBI in February 2017. This was one the several cases being monitored by the SIT team headed by Asthana,

Satish gave a statement before the Magistrate on October 4, naming Asthana, Prasad and Prasad’s relative, Somesh Srivastava, and gave details of how he had paid Rs 3 crore over a period of 10 months from December 2017 to stay away from the CBI case. Satish claimed he was harassed by CBI officers to pay more.

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