New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday remanded Hyderabad based businessman Satish Sana Babu, the man behind the CBI vs CBI battle last year, to judicial custody till August 23, in a money-laundering case the ED is investigating against controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi.
Sana was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on the night of July 26, in connection with the PMLA case where former CBI director AP Singh is also implicated. The financial probe agency was granted his custody by a court here, after which agency officials questioned him.
Remanding him to 14 days in judicial custody, the special court here also ordered that his bail application will be heard on August 17. Prior to this, Sana was in ED's custody for 14 days in connection with the Moin Qureshi case. According to the ED, Sana is involved in the Qureshi case, in which former CBI director AP Singh is also mixed up. The CBI had registered a case against Qureshi and Singh, based on ED's FERA investigation against the former.
In fact, Sana had made a complaint to the CBI last year that threw the agency into an internal war, with former Director Alok Verma getting ready to probe Asthana based on Sana's statement and Asthana subsequently making serious allegations of corruption against Verma.
The reason Sana's complaint rocked the probe agency last October was the seriousness of his allegations. According to the subsequent FIR that the CBI registered, there seemed to be a connection between summons being issued to Sana, illegal gratification received by Asthana, Devinder Kumar, and Samanth Goel (public officials) and the relief provided to Sana subsequently.
Sana was summoned by the CBI four times between October and December and it was allegedly agreed upon that `5 crore needed to be paid to stop further harassment. `3 crore was allegedly paid on December 10 and 13, 2017, after which the summons to Sana stopped. The businessman, however, was being pressurised to pay the rest of the amount, `2 cr. Interestingly, Asthana had claimed that it was former director Alok Verma who had taken the `2 cr to provide relief to Sana.