Graft case: Court seeks CBI's reply on accused' bail plea

A special court today sought CBI's response on the bail pleas of two persons arrested in a corruption case involving Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's former Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar.
Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar issued notice to the probe agency and fixed the matter for hearing on July 25 on the bail applications of Kumar's close aide Ashok Kumar and Managing Director of a PSU R S Kaushik.
The court, which was scheduled to hear arguments on Kumar's bail plea, will now take up the application for hearing on Saturday after CBI sought an adjournment.
The court, meanwhile, ordered defreezing of the bank account of Dinesh Kumar Gupta, an accused in the case, noting that it was not part of case property.

Advocate Harsh Kumar Sharma, who appeared for Gupta, said his client and his family were going through a tough time.
However, CBI opposed the plea for defreezing the bank account, saying that it was investigating the money trail.

Besides the four accused, CBI had also arrested former Deputy Secretary in Kejriwal's office Tarun Sharma and co-owner of the private firm, Sandeep Kumar. All the six accused are at present in the judicial custody.
According to CBI, the five accused were allegedly showing undue favours to private firm Endeavour Systems Pvt Ltd (ESPL) which the agency alleged was floated by Kumar for the award of government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore.

G K Nanda, former Managing Director of Intelligent
Communication Systems India Ltd (ICSIL), a Delhi government undertaking, has also been arrested in the case. Nanda, who is a predecessor of Kaushik, is at present in judicial custody.
The accused have been charged under section 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act relating to criminal misconduct for allegedly favouring ESPL in bagging of five contracts.
CBI has alleged that the accused persons had entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused a loss of Rs 12 crore to the Delhi government in award of contracts between 2007 and 2015, and claimed that the officials had taken "undue benefit" of over Rs three crore while awarding the contracts.

This is the same case in which the agency had come under scathing criticism from court which had directed it to return the documents sought by the Delhi government seized during December 15, 2015 search of Kejriwal's office.
The arrest of the top state government official had triggered a political storm with the Delhi government accusing the Centre of indulging in "political vendetta" and "paralysing" governance.