'The case is required to be thoroughly investigated and for that, sustained interrogation of the accused persons is required,' special CBI judge OP Saini said.
A Delhi court on Saturdya remanded National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO) chairman-cum-managing director Abhay Kumar Srivastava, his wife, and two others arrested in a bribery case in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) till March 3.
“The case is required to be thoroughly investigated and for that, sustained interrogation of the accused persons is required,” special CBI judge OP Saini said.
The CBI had on Friday arrested Nalco CMD Abhay Kumar Srivastava, his wife Chandani Srivastava, his accomplice Bhushan Lal Bajaj, and Bhushan’s Anita Bajaj, and recovered about 10 kg of gold bricks and cash amounting to about Rs30 lakh.
The CBI submitted that Bhushan Lal Bajaj was acting as a middleman for Srivastava for arranging bribe money by corrupt means from those trading in aluminium with Nalco. It said Bajaj had collected huge illegal gratification on behalf of Srivastava from GS Bhatia, the CMD of the Bhatia Group of Companies.
It also claimed that Srivastava had instructed Bajaj to convert the illegal gratification from Bhatia group of companies into gold and to deliver the same to him.
Before entering the court, Chandni said: “The locker which the CBI has seized is not in my husband’s name, how can they arrest my husband and relate him to this?”
Meanwhile, the mines ministry, which oversees Nalco, has suspended Srivastava as CMD. BL Bagra, director (finance), has been given the additional charge of CMD till further orders, an official added.
The CBI had arrested Srivastava when his wife was accepting an illegal gratification of three gold bricks, each weighing one kg, of 24-carat gold. His wife was accepting the bribe from the wife of a middleman who was brokering a deal between the CMD and a Madhya Pradesh-based private company, the CBI said in statement on Friday night.
At the time of the CBI raid, Srivastava’s wife, accompanied by the wife of the middleman, had just deposited the three gold bricks in a bank locker of the Bank of Maharashtra in the national capital.
The bank locker was in the name of Anita. It was being operated by Srivastava’s wife “as benami”.
A search of the locker revealed seven more gold bricks of 1 kg each, golden ornaments weighing 188 grams and Indian currency of Rs.9.5 lakh. A search of Srivastava’s wife led to the recovery of Rs5 lakh from her handbag and the key to another locker in the name of the wife of the middleman.
A search of the second locker led to recovery of Rs15 lakh in cash. The total recoveries amount to 10.188 kg gold and Rs29.5 lakh in cash. The total value of the seizures works out to approximately Rs2.43 crore at current prices of gold, the statement said.
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