The CBI had registered an FIR against Asthana on October 15, 2018, alleging serious corruption charges against him on the basis of a complaint from businessman Sana Sathish Babu.The CBI under interim chief M Nageswara Rao on Friday transferred three key and senior officers, one of whom was engaged in probing a case of corruption against CBI special director Rakesh Asthana.
Following the appointment of Rao in the wake of the CBI’s internal tussle between Director Alok Verma and Asthana, who were both divested of their responsibilities by the government on October 23, the Supreme Court had ordered that the interim chief would not take any policy decision.
However, on Friday, the agency transferred CBI Joint Director V Murugesan from the unit probing Asthana to the unit overseeing coal scam cases. Hours later, though, the agency re-entrustred Murugesan with the Asthana case. “He has been divested of the responsibility of the unit probing the Asthana case. However, he will continue to supervise this particular case,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said.
Apart from Murugesan, the CBI also transferred Joint Director Bhanu Bhaskar from Delhi to Patna. Bhaskar was heading the CBI academy and Patna Zone which is overseeing the Muzaffarpur shelter home abuse case.
According to the orders, Murugesan, who was deputed by Director (in-charge) Rao to lead the investigation against Asthana, was transferred as part of efforts to give “impetus to expeditious completion of coal scam cases”. The order says Murugesan was “bogged down” by additional charge of Joint Director AC(HQ)-I zone, which being a “heavy zone” takes away much of his “time and attention”.
Murugesan’s charge has now been given to Joint Director G K Goswami, who in addition to his responsibility of the Lucknow zone will also look after AC (HQ)-I zone. It was this zone which was probing the case against Asthana. Dayal said the zone will be supervised by Goswami but the sole case of Asthana will remain under Murugesan.
The order about Murugesan also states that Joint Director Vineet Vinayak, looking after the anti-corruption wing, Delhi Zone, has been transferred. His charge has been given to Additional Director Praveen Sinha.
Here too the order says that Vinayak, who has been supervising coal cases, was bogged down by responsibility of Delhi zone, a “heavy zone”. It says that the coal scam cases have been hanging for over six years because of paucity of staff and so the transfers were necessary.
The order on Bhaskar says that he is being transferred to Patna to fully focus on the shelter home case as 16 new cases have now been entrusted with the CBI.
In all transfer orders, the CBI has mentioned that all these probes are monitored by the Supreme Court and the transfers are being done to expedite investigation. While CBI sources maintained that transfers were not part of policy, there was ambiguity on whether transfers of joint directors handling key investigations would be counted as outside the ambit of policy.
The CBI had registered an FIR against Asthana on October 15, 2018, alleging serious corruption charges against him on the basis of a complaint from businessman Sana Sathish Babu. The businessman, who was being questioned by Asthana’s special investigation team probing the Moin Qureshi case, had alleged that a Dubai-based middleman had offered to use his purported links with the special director to manage relief for him in return for a bribe of Rs 2 crore.
Asthana was sent on leave along with CBI Director Verma after the agency arrested a deputy SP of the special director’s team in the case for allegedly being an active participant in the conspiracy. The interim charge of the CBI was given to Rao.
