A Delhi court on Wednesday sent IPS officer Deepak Gahlawat to one-day CBI custody following his arrest in an alleged Rs 3 crore bribery case linked to the agency's probe into a fake drug manufacturing racket.
Gahlawat, a 2012-batch Haryana cadre IPS officer, was posted as joint director of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS).
Gahlawat is accused of demanding a bribe of Rs 3 crore against assuring relief to a Puducherry-based businessperson N Raja, who is facing a CBI probe.
According to CBI, Raja was facing a CBI investigation in an alleged fake drug manufacturing case registered earlier this year and got in touch with Delhi Crime Branch Inspector Pradeep Singh, who allegedly gave an assurance that he would be able to influence the probe.
Singh then arranged a meeting between Raja and Gahlawat at his office in Aerocity near the Delhi airport, where the IPS officer allegedly demanded Rs 3 crore, including an upfront payment of Rs. 1.5 crore, in return for a “favourable investigation”.
The CBI said that the businessperson arranged Rs 1 crore through a hawala transaction, which was allegedly handed over to Singh, who in turn passed on Rs 50 lakh to another middleman, Prabhat Kapur, who was known to the suspect public servant posted in CBI.
The prosecutor said Gahlawat had instructed co-accused Kapur to destroy his SIM card and uninstall an app to cause the disappearance of material evidence.
The CBI sought his five-day custody to unearth the larger conspiracy, confront him with pieces of evidence and ascertain the role of other unknown accused persons in the offence.
The judge, however, said that the issue of the existence of a larger conspiracy is beyond the purview of the present investigation, and police custody cannot be given for the said purpose.
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