21 customs officials booked for ‘illegal raid’

BENGALURU: The Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against 21 customs officials and seven others for allegedly conducting searches on houses and offices of a businessman without proper authorisation and by fabricating documents.
According to CBI sources, M Kriplani, proprietor of Next Gen Technologies, alleged he was harassed by customs officials at the air cargo complex in Bengaluru during his import transactions. He alleged they demanded illegal gratification from him and his employees.

In his complaint, Kriplani said his complaints to senior officials of the customs department yielded no results. The accused demanded Rs 10 lakh to release the goods he had imported. Further, the officials also conducted searches at his residence and office premises without proper authorisation and also fabricated documents.

The FIR was registered based on an order from the Karnataka high court and the officials have been accused of criminal conspiracy, forgery, using as genuine forged documents, demanding illegal gratification and criminal misconduct. The accused include 11 superintendents of customs, a deputy commissioner, an additional commissioner and eight inspectors.

The accused

Additional commissioner D Anil; deputy commissioner Sujith Kumar P Sompur; superintendents Lingaraju, Pramod Gulvady, Senthamarai Selvi, Sunil Kumar Singh, Narayanan, PG Shenoy, Chavan, Vishveshwar Bhatt, B M Ramahandra, Devappa Naik and Narasimhappa; inspectors Basavaraj, M V Srinivas, Niranjan Murthy, Gururaj G Nayak, Kasthuri, SS Lakshmi, Naseeruddin and Abdul Aziz are the accused officers. All the accused officers are currently posted at different locations.

The seven private individuals named in the case are Nitesh from KG Nagar; BS Sandeep from Peenya Industrial Area; Ajit Kumar from Whitefield; Kumar from Kadugodi; Nagaraj TN from Chikkajala; S Arjun from Hoskote and R Srinivas from Devanahalli.