CBI names special director Rakesh Asthana as accused in bribery case, lens on RAW officials

In a recent development over the corruption charges which surfaced in the CBI, the agency has filed an FIR against its special director Rakesh Ashthana in a bribery scandal and named him as an accuse.

The FIR filed earlier this week also named Samant Kumar Goel, the special director of Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) although not as an accused.

The CBI held Rakesh Ashthana as accused no. 1 in the bribery case which involved a businessman named, Moin Qureshi, who was under an investigation for corruption charges by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), interestingly headed by Asthana himself.

Earlier, Rakesh had written to the CVC complaining about the CBI director Alok Verma, for interfering in his working and functioning of duties. The CBI in the FIR has also said that Asthana was maligning the image of Director Verma and had even tried to “intimidate” officials of complaints to be filed in the CVC against Alok.

The CBI in a statement, on maligning the image of director Alok Verma, said “Its statement had read, “It is unfortunate that baseless and frivolous allegations are being made publicly without proper verification of facts to malign the image of the Director CBI and intimidate the officials of the organization.”

Meanwhile, senior lawyer of the Supreme Court, Prashant Bhushan had last year filed a petition in the apex court challenging the appointment of Rakesh Asthana as special director of the CBI but the Supreme Court had dismissed the petition, and it later on, this issue became one of the bone of contention for the agency itself.

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