The Enforcement Directorate has arrested a retired chief engineer and a contractor in connection with its money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the tendering process of the Delhi Jal Board. Jagdish Kumar Arora, a retired chief engineer, and contractor Anil Kumar Aggarwal have been taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and produced before a special court which remanded to four day custody on Thursday.
Special judge Bhupinder Singh sent Jagdish Kumar Arora, a retired chief engineer, and contractor Anil Kumar Aggarwal, both arrested on Wednesday, to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate after the federal agency claimed that their custodial interrogation was required to unearth the “larger conspiracy”. In its application seeking accused’s seven-day custody, the ED submitted that the accused were required to be confronted with the digital data recovered during investigation. The ED further claimed that some other people are being summoned in the case and the accused were required to be confronted with them. The federal agency had conducted raids in this case in July last year. The ED is conducting investigation in two separate matters of irregularities in the tendering process of the DJB and its criminal case stems from an FIR of the CBI and from the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the Delhi government.
The CBI FIR alleged that officials of the DJB gave “undue advantage” to NKG Infrastructure Limited while awarding tender to the company for supply, installation, testing and commissioning of electro-magnetic flow metres in connivance with officials of NBCC (lndia) Limited.
The second allegation pertains to the ACB complaint of November, 2022 where it was stated that DJB awarded a tender for setting up automotive bill payment collection machines (kiosks) in its different offices for facilitating consumers in bill payment.
Criticising the AAP government, Delhi BJP President Virendra Sachdeva has said that Kejriwal government has become synonymous with corruption and now every day a new scam comes to light. Sachdeva said that between 2012 and 2015, Arvind Kejriwal used to call auto magnetic water meters as loot meters and never got tired of accusing the then Sheila Dikshit government of corruption, but under the rule of Kejriwal government, new scams are coming out daily in the Delhi Jal Board.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that today the Kejriwal government has become synonymous with corruption,” he said. The BJP leader said the people of Delhi are shocked to know about the auto magnetic meter scam of Rs 38 crore in Delhi Jal Board during the Kejriwal regime in which ED has made 2 arrests today.
