The CBI on Friday arrested Abhay Kumar General Manager (Project) of RITES, his junior Rajiv Ranjan Deputy GM (Project) of RITES and Shashi Kumar, an employee of a company owned by Avtar Singh. They have been arrested on corruption charges. The CBI produced before them the court and secured their three days police remand. Fourth accused Avtar Singh has not been arrested.
All the three arrested accused were produced today before the Jurisdictional Court and were remanded to police custody. Abhay Kumar and Rajiv Ranjan are the officials of Rail India Technical & Economic Service Limited (RITES). The CBI said that they were arrested in a bribery case of Rs.2.72 Lakh.
Searches were conducted at 12 places in Ranchi, Patna, Deoghar, Gurgaon, Ramgarh etc at the premises of accused which led to recovery of cash of Rs.65.5 Lakh besides property documents and other incriminating documents.
A case was registered on June 2 against them charging them for conspiring together for collection and payment of illegal gratification for awarding tender to Joint Venture (JV) company. Avtar Singh is the owner of Hardev Construction Pvt. Ltd having the office in Deoghar.
The CBI said that railway officials got a huge bribe from the private persons to grant tender to Joint Venture company M/S HCPL-MBPL (addressed at C/o Hardev Construction Pvt. Ltd. (HCPL) and M/s Mehrotra Buildcon Pvt. Ltd. The project was related to the Patratu Project jointly awarded by RITES to Joint Venture company M/s Hardev Construction Pvt. Ltd. (HCPL) and M/s Mehrotra Buildcon Pvt. Ltd.
They fixed an amount of Rs 10 lakh to fix the tender and received half of the payment as first instalment. This payment was made in April. Accused officials insisted for the rest of the payment and accordingly Rs 2 lakh was also paid when the CBI got the information and conducted a discrete inquiry and the case was found true.