CBI arrests insider for giving fake clean-chit to Anil Deshmukh

Mumbai: In a massive embarrassment, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that it has raided and arrested its own sleuth for allegedly conniving to prepare a 'purported' clean-chit to former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, here on Thursday.

The raids took place in New Delhi and Allahabad while the arrest took place early Thursday, hours after the CBI had swooped on Deshmukh's son-in-law Gaurav Chaturvedi and his Nagpur-based lawyer Anand Daga late on Wednesday evening, from Worli in Mumbai.

The Chaturvedi-Daga duo was detained and their statements recorded till the wee hours when the complicity of an inside hand, the CBI's own official -- a Sub-Inspector Abhishek Tripathi -- was also confirmed. The CBI said in a terse statement this morning that it has registered a case against its own SI, the Nagpur-based lawyer (Daga) and other unknown persons for certain allegations, including corruption.

"During the investigations of the said case, CBI has today arrested the SI (Tiwari), while the lawyer (Daga) is being questioned," the agency said, even as raids were carried out in New Delhi and Allahabad and his personal lockers in the CBI offices here.

It maybe recalled that last weekend, media and political circles were rocked by a report purportedly giving a 'clean-chit' given to Deshmukh in the Bombay High Court-ordered preliminary enquiry (PE).

Rattled by the alleged leak, the CBI had issued two strong rebuttals on the issue, and quietly launched a probe into the matter which culminated in the nabbing of an 'inside hand' in the sordid episode.

The unsigned-undated-unattributed alleged PE report triggered a fresh political row with the Nationalist Congress Party and Congress demanding that the CBI should comment on the authenticity or otherwise of the report.

As a fallout of the incident, the CBI picked up Chaturvedi and Daga on Wednesday and early Thursday, nabbed its own (CBI) sleuth for allegedly conniving with them to prepare the fake PE report.

Slamming the move, State Congress Spokesperson Sachin Sawant said it was extremely "extremely serious" as they were taken away without serving any notice.

"The laws are being trampled and the country is run by 'Modi-Shah'... 'Whatever we say is the law', the Modi government should officially declare," said Sawant.

The Nationalist Congress Party on Thursday claimed that a leaked Central Bureau of Investigation report which purportedly gave a clean chit to former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh in a corruption case was genuine.

The central agency has now claimed that the report was leaked after a bribe was paid and it has registered a criminal case in this regard, NCP leader and Maharashtra Minority Affairs Minister Nawab Malik told reporters here.

But the Central Bureau of Investigation is not stating that the report itself was fake, he said.

"To save its face, it is saying that the report had been managed," Malik alleged.

"If the report is presented in the court, Anil Deshmukh will get reprieve. Whatever is happening is all politically motivated," he added.