CBI arrests top DRI official in Rs 25 lakh bribery case

New Delhi: After ending 2018 with a bang by registering a corruption case against its own erstwhile Special Director Rakesh Asthana, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) closed off 2019 by registering a corruption case against a top official of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and arrested him on Wednesday for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 3 crore.

Officials here said Chander Shekhar was an Additional Director General, in charge of the DRI's Ludhiana unit and had allegedly used his associates to demand a bribe of Rs 3 crore to settle a case in favour of the complainant. They added that when Shekhar's conduit, Rajesh Dhanda was accepting the first instalment of Rs 25 lakh from the complainant, agency officials arrested him in a trap and questioned him. Dhanda had then revealed that he was acting as a middleman in the deal on behalf of the senior DRI official.

The CBI started conducting searches at Shekhar's residence in Ludhiana, in addition to premises related to Dhanda and one other accused — Anup Joshi — in Noida and Delhi on Wednesday morning and eventually arrested Shekhar and brought him to the agency headquarters in Delhi. Officials added that Joshi, a Clearing House Agent, was also arrested in the case and all three accused will be produced before the competent court for custody proceedings.

The central agency has said in its FIR that the complainant in the case, who ran his private clearing agency, was raided by the DRI in June 2019, following which documents and materials pertaining to various exporters were recovered. The complainant told the CBI that a few days after the raids, he was approached by Joshi, the Clearing House Agent and Dhanda, who allegedly identified himself as a close friend of a senior DRI official.

The CBI has alleged that both Joshi and Dhanda then proceeded to demand an amount of Rs 3 crore from the complainant on behalf of the senior DRI official to ensure that he is not implicated in the case.

However, this is not the first time that Dhanda has found himself between a rock and a hard place with the DRI. The revenue agency had raided his premises in 2012 and had also found his alleged links to Ludhiana-based hawala dealer Mukesh Singhania.