CBI raids NCB officer’s premises over graft case

Panaji: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Tuesday conducted raids at the office of Narcotic Control Bureau (NCB), Porvorim and two other places in connection with an alleged corruption case against a NCB officer.

Sources said that the raids were conducted by the CBI in connection with the disproportionate assets (DA) case registered against NCB’s intelligence officer Bhanupratap.

Incidentally, this is the second such case of DA against an NCB official, as last year in September, the CBI had registered a DA case against the then NCB superintendent Jeetendra Ranjan.

Referring to the raids conducted by the CBI on Tuesday, reliable sources said that certain documents including three different bank locker keys have been attached.

The raids were conducted at Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, the native place of Bhanupratap, the NCB office at Porvorim and also at his residence in Goa. According to information, Bhanupratap has been in service with the NCB since the last eight years.

IANS ADDS FROM NEW DELHI: In a nationwide crackdown, the CBI on Tuesday raided 110 places

across 19 states and Union territories, in what is seen as the Modi government’s biggest ever action against corruption.

The CBI has registered around 30 separate cases relating to

corruption, criminal misconduct and arms smuggling among others.

According to a senior agency official, the raids started early morning in various cities including Delhi, Bharatpur, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Jammu, Srinagar, Pune, Jaipur, Goa, Raipur, Hyderabad,

Madurai, Kolkata, Rourkela, Ranchi, Bokaro, and Lucknow besides places in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar.

An agency official said here that the CBI carried out raids at over 13 places in Jammu and Kashmir in connection with an arms licence case. “The CBI has carried out searches at 11 places in Jammu and one place each in Udhampur and Srinagar on gun shops in the state.”

The official said that the agency’s raids came after it filed two cases on the request of the government over irregularities in issuing gun licences. He said that during searches incriminating documents with reference to issue and renewal of arms licences, blank application forms submitted by licencees, money transactions of the gun dealers with the licencees, blank no-objection certificates purportedly issued by the District Magistrate and the arms licence issue register of the DM office have been seized. 

The official said that besides Jammu and Kashmir, the agency also carried out searches in connection with probe into the Himachal Pradesh scholarship scam to the tune of Rs 250 crore. The official said raids were carried out at the premises of an educational institute NIELT in Kangra and its training centre in Chamba district of the state. The CBI also carried out searches at educational institutes in Una and Sirmour district.

The official said that out of the 30 cases, the agency also carried out raids at four places in UP’s Bulandshahr in a case pertaining to the exchange of demonetised currency of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 to the tune of Rs 58.5 lakh in November, 2016.

The CBI said that a case was registered against D K Gupta, then branch manager of Punjab National Bank, Meerut road branch in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad on allegation of opening a count of Kanha Sales corporation, Ghaziabad by flouting KYC norms of the bank and depositing invalid specified notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 amounting to Rs 58.5 lakh during period of demonetisation. “During searches several papers related to LIC, bank documents, immoveable properties and mutual funds have been recovered,” he said.