Court grants 2-day interim bail to officer after kin's suicide

A special court today granted two-day interim bail to graft accused Director General Corporate Affairs B K Bansal to attend the last rites of his wife and daughter, who allegedly committed suicide.
Special CBI Judge Gurdeep Singh granted the relief to Bansal till July 22 and said that after yesterday's incident (of suicide), its time for the probe agency to rethink whether it is necessary to arrest the accused in such cases.
"These are not the conventional crimes like murder. Earlier, CBI used to not arrest in such cases. The evidences are mostly documentary in nature," the judge said while noting that the accused are public servants.

The court allowed the plea moved by advocate Uma Kant Kataria, appearing for Bansal, who submitted that his client's presence was required for the last rites of his wife and daughter and that his own health condition was not good.
In its reply to Bansal's application, the probe agency said it has no objection to the interim bail to the accused on "humanitarian grounds".
Bansal's wife Satyabala (58) and daughter Neha (28) allegedly hung themselves from ceiling fans in two separate rooms at their residence in Nilkanth Apartments in east Delhi's Madhu Vihar yesterday.
Both the women left separate suicide notes, saying the CBI raid had caused "great humiliation" and they did not want to live after that. They, however, held nobody responsible for their deaths.

Bansal, an additional secretary-rank officer in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, was arrested by CBI on July 16 for allegedly accepting bribe from a prominent pharmaceutical company. CBI had carried out searches at eight locations in connection with the case during which the agency had claimed to have made cash recoveries.