CBI DSP Devender Kumar, accused in Rakesh Asthana bribery case, gets bail; Delhi court directs him to furnish Rs 50,000 bond

Delhi’s Patiala House Court on Wednesday granted bail to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Devender Kumar on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and surety of the same amount. Earlier in the day, the court had reserved its verdict on the bail plea filed by Kumar, who was arrested on 22 October in connection with bribery allegations involving his immediate senior at the agency, CBI Special Director Rakesh Asthana. [caption id=“attachment_5480631” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  CBI had arrested DSP Devender Kumar on 22 October. PTI[/caption] During the hearing, the lawyer appearing for the DSP told the court that the CBi had violated every rule in this case against him, and the “irony” is that the person who followed the rule was in jail. The CBI did not oppose Kumar’s bail petition either. In his bail application, Kumar called his custody “illegal” and claimed that CBI sleuths did not have valid search warrants when they raided his office and residence before his arrest. He also said he was ready to abide by conditions imposed by the court if granted bail. His eight mobile phones, an iPad and his son’s laptop were seized in the raids, Kumar said in his bail plea, seeking a direction to the CBI to release these articles. Kumar and Asthana have already challenged the legality of the FIR filed against them. Besides them, two alleged middlemen — brothers Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad — have also been named as accused in the case. The CBI had earlier told the court that Kumar had tried to fabricate evidence during the investigation into another case. Kumar had claimed that he was falsely implicated in the case and was a victim of rivalry among the senior officers of the investigating agency. Kumar had said he was looking into a case against meat exporter Moin Qureshi, in which the complainant in the present case — Hyderabad-based businessman Satish Babu Sana — was a suspect, and the names of some past and present senior CBI officers had surfaced. The DSP had claimed that his arrest in the present bribery case was motivated to stall the investigation into the Qureshi matter, and that there was no direct allegation against him. If convicted in the case, the accused may get a maximum of 10 years in jail. The FIR in the bribery case was lodged on the basis of a written complaint from Sana on 15 October, wherein it was alleged that Kumar, being the investigating officer in the case against Qureshi, had repeatedly called the complainant to the CBI office to harass him and compel him to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore to get a clean chit in the case. The complaint had also claimed that a part of the bribe was paid by Sana. With inputs from agencies