New Delhi: A court here Saturday convicted two Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers—one serving and another retired—of assault, criminal trespass and mischief, observing that their raid and arrest of an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer in 2000 was beyond the scope of their official duties.
The IRS officer was posted in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) between 1996 and 1998.
The CBI officer’s action, the court said, was undertaken with the ulterior motive of nullifying a Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order in favour of the IRS officer.
The convicted officers are Ramneesh Geer, currently serving as Joint Director in the CBI who was holding Deputy Superintendent of Police rank at the time of the incident, and V.K. Pandey, retired Assistant Commissioner of Police-rank officer who was Inspector in the CBI in 2000.
Geer belongs to the 1994 batch of the CBI’s in-house cadre and was awarded the President’s Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 2022.
The complainant in the case is Ashok Kumar Aggarwal, IRS officer of the 1985 batch. He was serving on deputation as a Deputy Director of Enforcement in the Delhi zone at the time of his arrest.
Magistrate Shashank Nandan Bhatt passed the order in the case lodged by Aggarwal in October 2001, alleging criminal trespass by a raiding team of the CBI led by Geer and including Pandey in the early hours of 19 October, 2000, that dragged him down the stairs of his house before arresting him.
Based on the complaint, the magistrate’s predecessors had, in January 2005, summoned both Geer and Pandey after observing a prima facie case against them under Sections 323/427/448/34 of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code, relating to offences of voluntarily causing hurt, mischief causing damage, house-trespass, and common intention.
The court framed charges in August 2017, leading to the duo’s conviction now. The matter is set for sentencing on 27 April.
“In light of the elaborate appreciation of the facts and evidences of the present case, this court is of the view that the entire search and arrest proceedings carried out by the accused persons on 19.10.2000 were in sheer violation of the powers bestowed upon them by law and with the sole objective of frustrating and nullifying the order dated 28.09.2000 passed by CAT, whereby the review of deemed suspension of the complainant within a period of four weeks was ordered,” Judicial Magistrate Bhatt observed.
“The actions of the accused persons were deliberate attempts aimed at denying the complainant the fruits of order passed by CAT and to keep him embroiled in investigations which were being conducted by CBI qua matters, in which the complainant was eventually discharged (as submitted by parties at the time of final arguments),” he added.
Also Read: PM Modi summons CBI’s top two cops, agency arrests its own DSP Devender Kumar
What happened 26 years ago
The matter goes back to 1999 when Aggarwal was “falsely implicated in active connivance with the officials of CBI” by a person he was investigating in connection with violations of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA), 1973, notes the Saturday order.
Aggarwal had alleged that he was implicated amid repeated attempts by his boss, then Director Manash Kumar Bezbaruah, to scuttle the probe into several cases against politicians and businessmen assigned to him.
In his complaint to the court, Aggarwal stated that after the CBI registered a criminal case against him, a team led by Geer raided his residential premises in March 1999. During the searches, the agency seized several documents related to his and his family’s income tax records.
The seizure of documents subsequently led to a case of disproportionate assets against him in December 1999. Aggarwal stated that he was summoned by Pandey in the matter more than 20 times.
Meanwhile, Aggarwal was suspended by the Ministry of Finance, a move he challenged before the CAT which, in September 2000, asked the ministry to review the “deemed suspension” within four weeks.
According to the court order, Aggarwal stated that soon after he secured a favourable order from the CAT, he “heard accused no. 2 (Geer) speaking to officials of Ministry of Finance to delay the review of suspension” and that he “would be further implicated in other cases”.
Apprehending such action by the CBI officials handling his case, Aggarwal wrote a letter to the then Revenue Secretary, who subsequently asked the CBI for its stance on the issue by 18 October, 2000.
“Interestingly, instead of furnishing the said reply within the stipulated time period i.e. by 18.10.2000, the very office from which the reply was sought (office of Superintendent of Police, CBI), conducted a meeting in the evening of 18.10.2000 and decided to proceed with conducting the search and arrest proceedings qua the complainant on the next morning, that too, in an investigation qua which the complainant had appeared before the investigating officer on 21 different occasions,” Judicial Magistrate Bhatt observed.
“All these factors lead to a necessary inference that the actions of the accused persons dated 19.10.2000 were malafide and done with the object of nullifying the order dated 28.09.2000, whereby the CAT had ordered the review of deemed suspension of the complainant within a period of four weeks,” he further stated, adding that the accused exercised their powers in a malafide manner.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: Cosy with CBI officials, caterer of Delhi club helped IAS, IRS officers stash loot