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Graft case: CBI outsmarted touts to nail top DRI official
The FIR by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a graft case has brought to the fore the details of the nexus involving additional director general (ADG) of
The FIR by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a graft case has brought to the fore the details of the nexus involving additional director general (ADG) of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Ludhiana, Chander Shekhar, an export clearing agent Anoop Joshi and billionaire businessman Rajesh Dhanda.
The trio were allegedly taking money from a Delhi-based exporter on the pretext of implicating him under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA) Act.
The FIR, a copy of which is with HT, also shows that nailing the top DRI official was not easy. Besides using high-rank independent witnesses, the central agency also used high-tech gadgets, including voice recorders, to bust the racket.
While Joshi and Dhanda tried to play it safe and kept their entire conversation on WhatsApp, a cross-platform messaging app, the CBI official went one step ahead and used high-tech voice recorder and screenshots to keep a log of the conversation.
The WhatsApp screenshots of December 12, such as “Sir kya bana bahut jayda pareshani aa rahi he apki taraf se response nahi mil raha ke what to reply, meaning thereby to update about the demanded bribe amount, also show how the pimps of DRI were extracting money from the exporter.
In one of the conversations both Dhanda and Joshi have explained as to how the Delhi-based complainant exporter would manage to earn ₹3 crore of the bribe amount in shape of duty drawback from just five export consignment by overpricing the products.
Where it all began:
The case and the bribery demand has its roots in June 2019, when the DRI, Ludhiana, had conducted a search at a private clearing agency clearing agency in Delhi providing services to exporters and confiscated record of 300 business firms. The exporters had submitted a written complaint on December 27 with the CBI and blew the lid off the entire nexus.
The exporter complained to the CBI that Joshi and Dhanda had demanded ₹3 crore on behalf of Shekhar for ensuring that he would not be implicated by the DRI, pertaining to the recovery of some documents.
The CBI had caught both the middlemen while accepting ₹25 lakh from the complainant. Shekhar was arrested after brief questioning.
The ADG charge of Ludhiana is considered a plum posting, as it has jurisdiction over Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh.
How Dhanda connected with DRI
Dhanda, a friend of the ADG, owns a hosiery factory. He is the chairman of the Bhagwan Jagannath Rath Yatra Mahotsav Committee, which organises the Rath Yatra in the city each year. Sources said Dhanda had come into contact with DRI officials a few years ago, when the agency had conducted a probe into irregularities in the duty drawback scheme being availed on shipments to The Gulf countries. Dhanda used his contacts in government agencies to spread his influence in the business circle.
BOX: The case:
The CBI last week had arrested DRI ADG Chander Shekhar and two middlemen, Rajesh Dhanda and Anoop Joshi, for taking ₹25 lakh bribe from a Delhi exporter for not implicating him in a document recovery case. The CBI had also confiscated mobile phones, a laptop, a computer and record from the ADG’s house. The accused were booked under Section 7A of the Prevention of Corruption Act and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for criminal conspiracy.
