The 55-year-old former bureaucrat, ex-CM Chautala and his son Ajay were among 50 convicted in 2013 in connection with irregularities in the recruitment of over 3,000 teachers in Haryana, known as the Junior Basic Training (JBT) scam.
The Delhi police on Friday claimed to have arrested a suspended Haryana cadre IAS officer convicted in the Rs700-crore teachers' recruitment scam, which also saw former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala landing in jail, on the charge of plotting to kill a friend, a co-accused in the scam.
The police said Sanjeev Kumar, who was on the run since 2013, was staying in a bungalow
in South Delhi's New Friends Colony with his wife. In fact, the plush house belongs to the same friend, Tikka Hassan Mustafa, the Nawab of Pindrawal in Aligarh, said the cops.
The 55-year-old former bureaucrat, ex-CM Chautala and his son Ajay were among 50 convicted in 2013 in connection with irregularities in the recruitment of over 3,000 teachers in Haryana, known as the Junior Basic Training (JBT) scam.
Kumar spent nearly six months in Tihar jail before securing bail on medical grounds, only to go underground. Earlier this year, a court had issued a non-bailable warrant against him.
Crime branch officers said Kumar wanted to 'kill three birds with a single arrow' and meticulously planned the entire crime. He had hired contract killers and instructed them to injure him as they killed Mustafa.
The police said Kumar suspected Mustafa, his close associate from his days as the sub district magistrate in Ambala in 2006, of hoarding nearly Rs4 crore of bribe money for himself.
"This way, it would have appeared that he too was a target. Second, he was hoping that the blame would be put on the Chautalas and the police would think that he was under threat. Third, he was expecting that the authorities would go easy on him and grant bail if turned himself in," said joint commissioner of police Ravindra Yadav.
The cops said Kumar had grown hostile towards the Chautalas after being imprisoned in Tihar, where he had claimed to be attacked by Chautalas' men on several occasions.
It was sort of a chance discovery for the police with regard to Kumar's role as the mastermind in the murder plot. Working on inputs, the crime branch was pursuing a contract killer, identified as Taufi. When they arrested the 28-year-old hitman, they learnt about the whole conspiracy.
Kumar during his stay in Tihar had come in contact with Pasha, a murder convict with about 60 cases. Through Pasha, he hired five shooters to bump off Mustafa. The police said the henchmen failed not once but on four occasions in the past two months, mainly because Pasha could not coordinate with them properly from inside the jail.
"Kumar initially claimed that he also wanted to be killed and had hired the sharp shooters for the job. But when we confronted him with credible evidence, he spilled the beans," said Dinesh Kumar Gupta, deputy commissioner of police (north), crime branch.
When asked if any action would be taken against Mustafa for harbouring Kumar, an investigating officer said, "In this case, Mustafa is the victim and we foiled a murder attempt on him. If the CBI wishes to take action against Mustafa they could do so with regards to the JBT scam case."
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