A Delhi court on Tuesday allowed the CBI to quiz in custody for seven days its Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar, who has been arrested in connection with bribery allegations involving the agency's Special Director Rakesh Asthana.

The court termed the offence as "grave" and noted that there were serious allegations about the involvement of public servants including the accused, who has been charged by the agency of being a part of an extortion racket being run in the garb of investigation.

Special CBI Judge Santosh Snehi Mann remanded Kumar to the custody of CBI, which had sought ten days of custodial interrogation alleging that it has recovered incriminating documents after raiding his office and residence.

Allegations against the accused include conspiracy of extortion and bribe to give clean chit to the complaint in a case pending investigation, he said.

The order was passed after the Delhi High Court had heard his petition seeking quashing of the FIR lodged against him and his senior, Rakesh Asthana, the Special CBI Director. While the high court ordered status quo on the criminal proceedings against Asthana, there was no such relief for Kumar.

CNBC-TV18's Parikshit Luthra discusses the issue with Shantonu Sen, former joint director, CBI; Prakash Singh, former director general of police, Uttar Pradesh; Navin Kumar, BJP spokesperson; Rahul Tyagi, member of Devender Kumar's Council and Majeed Memon, senior Lawyer and NCP leader.

Singh said, "The fight between the director and special director have been going on for quite some time. People said for the last two months it's happening. During this period, I would have expected the ministry of personnel or the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to sort out matters, so that there is no washing of dirt in public. Unfortunately that has not happened. I think it's regrettable."

Sen said, "It leaves one perplex, how can one person bribe the two persons? I don’t know how to react. Intervention should have taken long ago and the matter should have been put to a halt. It's a complete failure of the government. There has been dispute going on as far as I know from the beginning of this year."

"First, there was ego problem. Possibly, the ego problem came as far as I can guess at this moment is Asthana knows the CBI. He has worked in the CBI and he probably was reminding the new director, who had no knowledge of the agency functioning of what to do and what not to do. This must have hurt director's ego. Thereafter, director came to know of certain information and he started taking action against Asthana probably and that put them off. This was known to the CVC and under the act, it's responsible for the proper functioning of the CBI."

Memon said, “It's indeed a situation so confused, complex and pathetic that the offenders of the category of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi etc. for whom we are spending millions of rupees to secure their bodily presence by means of extradition on the foreign files, they would easily make an application before that court pointing out that these allegations are being carried by the officers that have dubious character and they cannot be trusted prima facie. I am sure that the courts there would look into the merit of this kind of contention raised therein."

First Published:Oct 23, 2018 9:21 PM IST