CBI busts racket falsely promising governorship, RS seats for Rs 100 crore; 4 including Belagavi man arrested

PTI, Jul 26, 2022, 9:02 AM IST

The CBI has claimed to have busted a multi-state job racket where plum posts like the governor of a state and member of Rajya Sabha were allegedly offered by a group of people at a price of Rs 100 crore.

The agency had conducted searches at seven locations in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Karnataka recently in connection with the case, officials said, adding that four members — Kamalakar Premkumar Bandgar of Maharashtra’s Latur, Ravindra Vithal Naik of Karnataka’s Belgaum and Delhi-NCR based Mahendra Pal Arora and Abhishek Boora — were arrested.

Another accused, Mohammed Aijaz Khan, escaped during the search operation after allegedly assaulting CBI officers, they said, adding that a separate FIR was filed against him at the local police station in connection with this.

The agency, in its FIR, has named all five accused in connection with the case, the officials said.

A special CBI court, however, has granted bail to all four people arrested by the agency.

It is alleged that Bandgar, who impersonated a senior CBI officer and flaunted his ”connections” with highly placed officials, had asked Boora, Arora, Khan and Naik to bring any sort of work that he could fix in lieu of payment of huge illegal gratification.

They conspired with ”the sole ulterior motive of cheating private persons by falsely assuring them of arrangement of seats in Rajya Sabha, appointment as governor, appointment as chairman in different government-run organizations under central government ministries and departments against huge pecuniary consideration,” the FIR alleged.

The agency came to know through its sources that Boora discussed with Bandgar how the latter’s purported connections with high-ranking officials playing ”pivotal roles” in appointments could be exploited to get the work done.

It surfaced that the accused were attempting to cheat people by falsely assuring them of candidature for Rajya Sabha against a huge consideration to the tune of Rs 100 crore, the FIR stated.

The CBI received information that they would drop names of senior bureaucrats and political functionaries to impress clients approaching them for some work either directly or through middlemen like Abhishek Boora, it stated.

It also emerged that Bandgar posed as a senior CBI officer and threatened police officials of various police stations to grant favors to people known to him or to influence investigations of ongoing cases, the FIR alleged.