Railway scam: Judge questions CBI's clean chit to Bansal

The judge who is handling the probe in the Railway bribery scam has questioned CBI’s deciding not to prosecute Pawan Kumar Bansal and said that he may seek an examination into the former Railway Minister’s role in the scam. “The high and mighty should not escape the law.The culture of sifarish (lobbying for recommendations) and right contacts will not do,” NDTV quoted CBI special judge Swarna Kanta Sharma as saying in a written order on Thursday. [caption id=“attachment_970515” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pawan Kumar Bansal. AFP[/caption] Bansal had quit his post as the Railway Minister over the Rs 10 crore cash-for-post railway bribery scam. Bansal’s nephew Vijay Singla was named in the scam as he was trying to secure a posting for Railway Board members Mahesh Kumar in exchange for cash. However, Bansal today continued to plead his innocence. “I wasn’t aware of any deal. One needs to have some faith in the institutions. When the CBI raids my nephew’s house, it is hailed as good. When even after interrogating me for seven hours the CBI couldn’t find anything, then is CBI wrong?” he said. He said that he has done nothing wrong and that the BJP had been raking up issues for years. “I had no conversations with my nephew and made no promises,” Bansal said. The court had on 4 July taken cognisance of CBI’s chargesheet, in which the agency has alleged that Singla had demanded Rs 10 crores from Kumar for his appointment to the post of Member (Electrical). It was decided between the accused that Rs five crore will be paid before the appointment and the rest will be paid after the job was done. The first tranche of Rs 89.68 lakhs was allegedly given to Singla who was apprehended in Chandigarh while accepting the money, it has said. CBI had filed its charge sheet against 10 accused — Mahesh Kumar, Singla, Managing Director of Bangalore-based G G Tronics India Pvt Limited Manjunath Narain Rao, middlemen Garg and Sandeep Goyal, Rahul Yadav, Sameer Sandhir, Sushil Daga, C V Venugopal and M V Murali Krishan. With inputs from PTI