I am being targeted, says ex-CBI chief A P Singh

Amar Pratap Singh, the former CBI chief who has been booked by the agency, on Sunday claimed he was being "targeted" for his personal equations with controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi and said he would welcome a fair and impartial inquiry in the case by the probe agencies.

His statement came on a day when media reports claimed that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) would soon begin a process of attaching his properties in connection with its probe into an alleged Prevention of Money Laundering case registered against Qureshi.

"I have read the newspaper reports. It appears I am being targeted, but am not sure of the reasons why," Singh said in a statement here. Strongly denying the charges levelled against him by the CBI which had registered a case against him last month and carried out searches at his residence, Singh, who was the CBI Director from 2010 to 2012, said "I welcome any CBI and ED investigation and sincerely hope that they will be fair and impartial.

"I shall be fully cooperating with any such investigation," Singh, a 1974-batch IPS officer, said.

The CBI has named Singh along with Qureshi and others in an FIR registered in February for allegedly favouring the meat exporter after receiving a complaint from the ED.

The former CBI chief had said that the messages had been in public domain "for over three years".

"Income Tax and Enforcement Director have not added anything further. None of the purported messages sent through BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) pertain to the CBI investigations.

They are mostly personal and innocuous in nature as between friends," he had said immediately after his house was searched by the CBI.

Enforcement Directorate chief Karnal Singh had alleged that in the course of investigation in a Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) case against AMQ Group of companies owned by Qureshi, it had transpired that the businessman was acting as a middleman for some public servants.