Court calls CBI arrest of IRS officer, 2 others in bribery case not legal

In a big jolt to probe agency, a Thane court on Friday held that the CBI arrests of a senior IRS officer posted in Maharashtra’s Raigad district and two others in an alleged Rs 1.5-crore bribery case were “not legal”, citing arrest procedure “was not in accordance with law”, and ordered their release on personal bonds of Rs 15,000 each. The court also rejected the CBI’s request for their custodial interrogation, noting that the bribe money has already been seized and, in a personal search, mobiles of all accused were also recovered; hence, there were no “satisfactory reasons” for further custodial interrogation.
“CBI will again approach the concerned court for obtaining custody of the accused persons for proper investigation of this bribery case as CBI has scrupulously followed all legal requirements for the arrest of the accused persons, including communicating the grounds of arrest to the concerned,” sources said.
The CBI had produced Additional Commissioner of CGST Vinay Kumar Kantheti, a 2009-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, CGST Superintendent Rakesh Kumar Sinha and private person Narinder Rajput before the court on Friday, hours after their arrest, seeking police custody for further questioning. In its order, the court noted that the investigating officer had submitted a case diary containing “papers tied with a tag” which were “loosely tightened”. “Therefore, they were not in accordance with the provisions as prescribed in law,” In-charge Additional Sessions Judge MS Lone observed.
The court said the place of arrest seems to be the CBI office, or it was one and the same place in Panvel. “To see whether the accused persons were informed about the grounds and reasons of arrest. For this purpose there is an arrest memo in case diary which is in prescribed form and it is been filled in typography. “This indicates that the official have themselves prepared the arrest memo without considering whether the grounds and reason of arrest were understood accused person or not. Their relatives were not informed in writing. Therefore I have come to conclusion that the arrest all accused is not legal,” it said.
The court, while refusing to grant police custody, said the CBI had already seized the alleged bribe money and recovered the mobiles of all three accused during their personal searches. It found no “satisfactory reasons” for further custodial interrogation. The court subsequently ordered the release of all three accused on personal bonds of Rs 15,000 each.
The CBI had earlier registered an FIR against Sinha based on allegations that he had demanded a bribe to settle a GST and royalty matter involving a stone-quarrying firm, according to a statement issued by the agency earlier in the day. According to the CBI, the alleged bribe demand of Rs 1.5 crore was subsequently reduced to Rs 40 lakh following negotiations. “The accused public servants had arranged for collection of the bribe amount through a private person and accordingly directed the complainant,” a CBI spokesperson said in the statement.