The Chhattisgarh Government on Tuesday placed senior IAS officer B l Agrawal under suspension with immediate effect after country’s premier investigating agency arrested him for allegedly offering bribe to officials to ‘fix’ a long pending case against him.
Special CBI judge Virender Kumar Goyal sent the IAS officer and two others to police custody in Delhi for five days and said his custodial interrogation was required to unearth the larger conspiracy. It was alleged that Agrawal tried to pay a bribe of `1.5 crore to the officials to ‘settle’ a case of financial irregularities against him pending in the CBI court.
The 1988-batch IAS officer was principal secretary, higher education and had been hitting headlines for the last several years for allegedly engineering and masterminding bribery scandals.
The Chhattisgarh Government had suspended Agrawal in early 2010 when Income Tax officials raided his house and came across documents suggesting that the IAS officer had amassed assets disproportionate to his known source of income. He was accused of opening at least 220 accounts in the Raipur-based branch of the Union Bank, all in the name of poverty-hit Kharora village residents. But later, State government revoked his suspension.
The CBI had registered a case on Saturday against Agrawal, a private person (Bhagwan Singh), resident of Greater Noida, another private person (Syed Burhanuddin), resident of Hyderabad (Telangana) and other unknown persons under section 120-B of IPC r/w Section 8 of P.C. Act, 1988 on allegations related to payment of `1.5 crore (approximately) by the said public servant to private persons as gratification for help in a case against him, under investigation by the CBI, the agency said in a press release.
It was informed that an amount of `45 lakh (approximately) was handed over by Agrawal to a hawala dealer at Raipur since February 11, 2017 onwards. The amount was to be delivered to Bhagwan Singh at Delhi. Out of the total amount, `20 lakh (approximately) was delivered to Bhagwan Singh.
It was also alleged that the receivers agreed to accept part gratification payment in the form of 2 kg gold to be delivered by the brother-in-law, Anand Agrawal, of the IAS officer to the contact of Syed Burhanuddin at Raipur, the press release said.
During investigation, 2 kg of gold was recovered. Searches were earlier conducted in the premises of the accused persons and Hawala operators . An amount of `20 lakh (approximately), earlier delivered to Bhagwan Singh was recovered during the search.