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Delhi

GST bribery racket: CBI says suspect officials' mobiles seized

New Delhi: After a Rs 2.26 lakh bribery trap case led to the arrest of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's Officer on Special Duty (OSD), Gopal Krishna Madhav, a DANICS officer who also held additional charge as Special Inspector in the state GST office, the CBI has now claimed that the GST bribery racket was being operated in a "cartel-like" fashion and that names of several other public officials have now come up as suspects.

The Central Bureau of Investigation was appearing in a Delhi court here, seeking an extension of police custody for Madhav, who was arrested two days before the Capital went to the polls on Saturday. When asked about Madhav's role in the case, the agency said his name had come up multiple times in connection with the case.

The agency's counsel argued that Madhav's name had come up in the materials recovered from searches at the residence of middleman Dheeraj Gupta and other accused. In addition, the CBI said that Gupta had claimed he was accepting the bribe amount on behalf of Madhav. Moreover, the agency said that Madhav had also submitted a disclosure statement to the CBI which in itself would warrant further probe.

The CBI had sought seven days of additional police custody for Madhav but a Special judge granted the agency his custody for four more days till February 14, when he is to be produced in court again. The agency had also put in an application seeking police custody of Gupta, with respect to which the court issued a production warrant directing that he be produced on Tuesday afternoon.

Widening probe

The CBI has also claimed that several other public officials of the Delhi government are under its scanner, including 2007-batch IAS officer Udit Prakash Rai, who was searched by the agency shortly after Madhav's arrest. The central probe agency said that they had seized around four to five mobile phones of several of the suspect officials and were in the process of scrutinising data from there including communication on messaging applications like WhatsApp.

In addition, the federal agency has also alleged that there is a long list of transporters who might have struck quid-pro-quid deals with the suspect GST officials, which needed to be investigated in detail. The investigating officer of the case told the court that Madhav also needed to be confronted with the list of transporters for the probe.

The court allowed further remand of Madhav citing that the investigation was in a nascent stage and since Madhav's name had come up multiple times, the agency should have a "fair chance" to conduct its probe.

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