Bribe-for-relief scam: CBI suspends 2 officers, recommends action against 2 more

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday suspended two of its officers - Inspector Kapil Dhankad and Stenographer Sameer Kumar Singh - and approached the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) recommending administrative action against two deputy superintendents- RK Rishi and RK Sangwan, for allegedly running a bribe-for-relief racket in the agency, people familiar with the development said.

The DoPT is the nodal ministry for the CBI and any administrative action against Class-I gazetted officers (DSPs) is approved by it while the CBI Director has powers to suspend Inspectors and below rank officers.

Four officers were allegedly accepting bribes from companies under CBI investigation.

A senior CBI officer, who didn’t want to be named, said, “The agency has zero tolerance policy against corruption, be it other departments or within the organisation hence two officers have been suspended while action has been recommended against the other two”.

According to the CBI case against the officers, they were accepting bribes from private companies by leaking sensitive case related information to them. Bribes worth around ₹55 lakh paid to two officers has already been identified and efforts are being made to ascertain the payments made to two others.

As reported by HT, the racket was being run inside the agency since 2018 and there is a possibility that more officers are involved in diluting the CBI cases in lieu of illegal gratifications.

The two DSPs -- RK Rishi and RK Sangwan – mainly played the role of bribe facilitators leaking the information to the companies.

All four have been questioned by a team led by a Superintendent of Police (SP) rank officer in Anti-Corruption-4 unit of the agency, which has jurisdiction to investigate cases all over India.

HT couldn’t locate the four officers for their comments.

However, a senior cadre officer in the CBI, who didn’t want to be named, said, “How is it possible that a stenographer, or an Inspector was leaking case information or documents and the concerned SP wasn’t aware of it? Shouldn’t there be a wider probe rather than restricting it to DSPs only?”

CBI Director Rishi Kumar Shukla, who is due to complete his two-year tenure in February first week, didn’t respond to a text query.

The scandal has hit the agency at a time when CBI is investigating a large number of bank fraud cases involving huge public funds.