India’s top anti corruption agency, Central Bureau of Investigation, Monday registered and FIR against its former director AP Singh and raided his residence for allegedly favouring controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi.
CBI sources said a case has been registered against Singh, Qureshi, his employee Aditya Sharma, owner of Trimax group of companies Pradeep Koneru and other unknown persons.
As per reports, the agency conducted searches in four cities – New Delhi, Chennai, Ghaziabad and Hyderabad.
Qureshi has been accused of accepting money from several people for securing favours from public servants.
The FIR was lodged on a complaint from the Enforcement Directorate, the country’s anti-money laundering probe agency.
The premises searched included those of an employee of Qureshi, his company, Singh’s residence and that of Pradeep Koneru in Hyderabad. Koneru is also being probed by the CBI in connection with the disproportionate assets case against YSR Congress leader Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Singh, a 1974-batch IPS officer, headed the agency between November 30, 2010 and November 30, 2012.
File photo: Amar Pratap Singh aka AP Singh, former CBI Director.
The CBI has based its FIR on the complaint forwarded by the Enforcement Directorate chief Karnal Singh, who alleged that in the course of investigation in a Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) case against AMQ Group of companies owned by Qureshi, it transpired that the businessman was acting as a middleman for some public servants.
According to media reports, the ED chief had attached records of Blackberry chat messages exchanged between Singh and Qureshi to allege that cognizable offences were committed by the two in collusion with each other.
ED Assistant Director Arun Kumar, whose complaint was also attached with Singh’s letter, alleged that Qureshi took “huge money” from different persons for obtaining undue favours from public servants and politicians holding high offices.
The ED has appended 22 BBM messages which were exchanged between AP Singh and Moin Qureshi even after the retirement of the IPS officer.
As per reports, only three messages, in addition to 22, were allegedly exchanged between Singh and Qureshi when the former was the CBI Director, according to the ED.
