CBI raids home, office of its own SP-rank officer in bribery case

An amount of Rs 5 lakh, three mobile phones and a few scanned copies of cheques were recovered by the agency from his residence. According to sources, the agency will now interrogate <g data-gr-id="26">Barik</g>.

<g data-gr-id="27">Barik</g> was said to be dealing with the trial of a case of fraud pending against a businessman. The businessman was caught red-handed by the agency, bribing ex-Army officer Major Nirvikar Singh and the duo was arrested from the Khan Market area in May this year. Singh was believed to be in close contact with <g data-gr-id="28">Barik</g> and had accepted a bribe of Rs 15 lakh, which was a part payment of the total Rs 30 lakh that was demanded from the businessman in order to get certain favours from <g data-gr-id="29">Barik</g>.

It was speculated by the agency that Nirvikar Singh had demanded and accepted the bribe on behalf of <g data-gr-id="22">Barik</g>, following which the CBI started closing up on its own official. According to sources, Nirvikar Singh is said to have built a close rapport with the CBI official during the probe of disproportionate assets case against him.

The CBI had registered an FIR against Singh, his mother Kiran and brother <g data-gr-id="34">Jagrut</g> on June 16, 2010, on charges of amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. The agency had alleged that during his 15 years of service, Nirvikar Singh had earned around Rs 40 lakh, but he and his family members held assets of over Rs 9 crore, which was nearly 216 times his known source of income.

Major Nirvikar Singh had a four-year stint as the ADC of General SF Rodrigues (<g data-gr-id="30">Retd</g>) between 2005 and 2009, who was then the Governor of Punjab. During this time, he had come under the CBI scanner with regard to clearance of some mega projects in Chandigarh but was never named as an accused in these cases, which were also entrusted to the CBI.