New Delhi, Jul 1 A Delhi court on Wednesday sent IPS officer Deepak Gahlawat, posted as joint director of the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), 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 who was also serving as BCAS regional director at the time of the alleged offence, was produced before Special Judge Sushant Changotra.
The court granted the CBI one day's custodial interrogation against its request for five days.
During the proceedings, the judge deprecated the conduct of the CBI’s investigating officer (IO) after posing certain queries related to the probe.
“The answer to queries posed to the IO today makes it apparent that to date no effort has been made in the investigation as to whether any public servant who was posted in CBI was ever approached by accused Deepak Gahlawat or he had made any attempt to exercise his personal influence over such public servants,” the judge said.
He said the IO did not make any endeavour to ascertain whether such a person existed or about the identity of this public servant.
“The conduct of the IO in this respect and the responses given by him today are totally unfathomable,” the judge said.
He said the IO did not clarify which part of the transaction is yet to be confronted with the accused.
When asked whether Gahlawat could be quizzed in judicial custody, the IO nodded in acquiescence. However, after the prosecutor stressed that custodial interrogation was necessary to confront the accused with evidence, the court granted one day's custody.
Gahlawat is accused of assuring a Puducherry-based businessperson a favourable outcome in the CBI probe by using his purported influence over agency officials in return for the bribe.
The arrest stems from an FIR registered by the CBI on June 8 against Delhi Police Crime Branch Inspector Pradeep Singh, alleged middleman Rajkumar and businessman N Raja.
Last month, the agency arrested Singh, Rajkumar and five others in a trap operation, recovering Rs 25 lakh as trap money and another Rs 90 lakh, besides incriminating documents, the CBI said.
It said Raja was facing a CBI investigation in an alleged fake drug manufacturing case registered earlier this year and got in touch with Singh, who allegedly gave an assurance that he would be able to influence the probe.
According to the CBI, 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 agency 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.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the prosecutor said that Gahlawat demanded Rs 50 lakh as part of illegal gratification from accused Raja for exercising his personal influence over a public servant posted in CBI to secure relief.
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.
