TV actor under CBI lens for bribing senior official

NEW DELHI: The CBI probe against a senior official in the ministry of corporate affairs revealed that the civil servant had allegedly accepted a bribe from a Mumbai

NEW DELHI: The CBI probe against a senior official in the ministry of corporate affairs revealed that the civil servant had allegedly accepted a bribe from a Mumbai firm for not investigating complaints that the firm had duped investors.

HT Image

Anuj Saxena, who has acted in television serials, is Elder Pharmaceuticals’ chief operating officer (COO), and is under the agency’s scanner.

Saxena was named as an accused in the CBI’s first information report (FIR) in the case. The agency is likely to question him once he returns from abroad, said an agency source.

“Anuj Saxena, COO of the Mumbai firm, had sought the assistance of a Delhi-based middleman who was also working as their distributor in Delhi to get in touch with the senior ministry official to scuttle the probe,” said the source.

The CBI on Saturday had nabbed BK Bansal, director general of corporate affairs in the ministry for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 9 lakh from representatives of the firm . An internal inquiry by the ministry, which examined over a 1,000 complaints against the firm, had sought a probe by the serious fraud investigation office (SFIO).

“Earlier in July, Bansal had also accepted Rs 11 lakh from the firm’s middleman as the first installment of the total of Rs 20 lakh he sought as bribe for favouring the firm,” a CBI official alleged. The agency arrested Bansal and alleged middleman Vishwadeep Bansal along with two other private persons in the case. Bansal, a senior officer of the Indian Corporate Law Service, was promoted to the post of director-general last year.