'Fight' for dead DRI officer's reputation, arrested by CBI despite saying no to bribe

A senior officer of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), who had unearthed corruption involving public servants and some exporters, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), allegedly in a trap case.

Strangely, the arrest happened though the officer, who died subsequently, had not accepted any bribe money during a “controlled delivery” operation engineered by the CBI.

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So, what happened? Based on voluminous court documents, The Federal has pieced together a story that raises serious legal questions about how the case was handled by the country’s premier anti-corruption agency. Here is part one:

Complaints and arrests

First, the facts of the case.

In 2019, exporter Sudhir Gulati filed a complaint with the CBI, alleging that two private persons – Anup Joshi and Rajesh Dhanda – were seeking a bribe on behalf of DRI officer Chandra Shekhar to settle inquiries initiated by the Directorate. The CBI claimed that after registering an FIR in the case, it laid a trap and arrested Joshi, Dhanda and Chandra Shekhar on January 1, 2020.

However, while the probe was ongoing, Joshi and Chandra Shekhar died of COVID in 2021.

The CBI filed a chargesheet in the case in December 2021 against the lone remaining accused, Rajesh Dhanda. But the court returned it, saying the agency cannot invoke sections of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act since Chandra Shekhar, the only public servant arrested in the case, was dead.

Identical chargesheet

Yet, a year later, in December 2022, the CBI filed an almost identical chargesheet against the same accused in the same court, when the previous special judge, who had returned the chargesheet, had been transferred. The judge who succeeded him took cognisance of the charges.

The accused, Dhanda, moved the Delhi High Court against the cognisance order, and the matter is still pending. In his petition, Dhanda argued that the cognisance taken by the court amounted to a review of the predecessor judge’s order by the same court, which is against the procedure laid down in law.

Now let’s go back to the case against Chandra Shekhar.

Trap against Chandra Shekhar

In its chargesheet, the CBI told the court on December 31, 2019, that the agency laid a trap and arrested Anup Joshi while accepting the first installment of a Rs 25 lakh bribe from the complainant, Sudhir Gulati. Even though Dhanda had left the spot (a hotel) and had walked out without touching the alleged bribe money, he too was brought back and arrested.

The investigators claimed that Dhanda, after his arrest, told them that Chandra Shekhar would accept bribe money if it was delivered in person at his residence in Ludhiana. The officers allowed a WhatsApp call between Dhanda and Chandra Shekhar, which was recorded by the agency.

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Per the chargesheet, in the call, when Dhanda informed him about his meeting with Gulati, who wanted to give him some saamaan (things) along with Anup Joshi, the DRI officer replied, “na, na, na, na” (no, no, no, no). Dhanda persisted, with CBI officers listening in, and said the DRI officer could see if Gulati’s work could be done. But Chandra Shekhar again said no, and added, “Where is this? Don’t you know, okay, okay.”

According to the CBI document, later in the conversation, Chandra Shekhar said his “heart changed suddenly,” though the agency was unclear in what context he said this and about whom.

Arrest without a bribe

Later, Chandra Shekhar called Dhanda back and asked him why he was sounding a little hassled. The DRI officer sounded suspicious as Dhanda seemed nervous. Dhanda replied that it seemed his blood pressure had shot up.

The agency later disclosed that when Dhanda, armed with a recorder, tried to give bribe money to Chandra Shekhar at his residence, the officer refused to accept it. The agency interpreted Chandra Shekhar’s refusal as a response to Dhanda's nervousness. It presented before the court four sentences from the recorded conversation to claim that the DRI officer was merely postponing acceptance.

Despite his refusal to accept bribe money, the agency then arrested Chandra Shekhar.

Dhanda's queries

“Let us assume, as per the CBI, Chandra Shekharji postponed acceptance of the bribe and wanted me to deliver the money to his residence in Delhi. Then what stopped the agency from bringing me back from Ludhiana to Delhi and completing the delivery of the bribe there?" asked Dhanda when The Federal contacted him.

"Since the whole operation was being controlled by the CBI, it would have proved the agency’s claim. But instead, they said the so-called controlled delivery could not be completed and rushed to arrest me and Chandra Shekharji.

"I am fighting for the reputation of a dead man since he is not here to defend himself,” he added.

Corruption trail ignored

Documents show that before his arrest, Chandra Shekhar had been repeatedly writing to concerned officers and departments, urging action on cases of tax evasion worth Rs 2,000 crore involving a few exporters. His team had unearthed evidence that some suspect exporters had bribed government servants to deal with the matter.

Funnily, the CBI had put Chandra Shekhar’s phone under surveillance even before it received the complaint from Sudhir Gulati on December 27, 2019. The FIR, based on Gulati’s complaint, was registered two days later, on December 29.

During the course of the investigation, but before Chandra Shekhar’s death, the CBI called an officer who had earlier been posted in the DRI’s Delhi office and made him listen to a conversation with Chandra Shekhar. The officer duly identified Chandra Shekhar’s voice, but according to the voice recognition memo prepared by the agency, the conversation had been recorded on October 14, 2019, almost two months before Gulati’s complaint.

Missing call records

Another CBI document shows that the agency had 835 recorded calls intercepted after obtaining due permission from the Home Secretary. However, this document has not been relied upon by the agency for Dhanda’s trial.

Following Dhanda’s application and the court’s order, the CBI provided a list of documents but did not give their details.

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“If Chandra Shekhar’s phone was under surveillance, and during the same period, as claimed by the CBI, I was acting as his middleman, then I must assume that there must be my conversations with him too. The CBI should disclose whether there was any illegality in my conversations with him," said Dhanda.

Documents status

"I also want to know what happened to the corruption unearthed by the DRI, Ludhiana, under Chandra Shekharji’s supervision. After arresting him, the CBI picked up all relevant documents from the DRI office about the corruption case, but I am yet to know the status of those documents or any probe thereon. I have moved court and sent a complaint to the CBI brass about it, but haven’t heard anything back,” Dhanda added.

But this was not the only twist in the saga. The recorded conversation between Dhanda and Chandra Shekhar at the time of the alleged “controlled delivery” of bribe told an entirely different story from what the CBI told the court.

In the next part of the story, readers will get to know more about what exactly transpired between Dhanda and Chandra Shekhar.

(To be continued.)