New Delhi: The body of a man found on the railway tracks at Gaushala Phatak in Ghaziabad on Sunday has been confirmed to be of an Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer, who the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) recently questioned in a bribery case.
The GRP identified the officer as Alok Kumar Pankaj, who was with the investigation unit-1 of the ED headquarters. After scanning CCTV footage, the police said they suspect that Pankaj took his life by jumping between two coaches of a slow-moving goods train.
On 7 August, the CBI Anti-Corruption Branch in Mumbai registered an FIR against an ED team for allegedly demanding a bribe from a local jewellery businessman. Pankaj was not named as an accused in the FIR, but his name was mentioned as part of the ED team, and he was questioned about his role, sources in the CBI said.
After the CBI’s FIR, the ED took cognisance and lodged an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against its assistant director Sandeep Singh, who the CBI named as the accused in the case.
GRP’s Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Sudesh Kumar Gupta confirmed to ThePrint that the GRP police station received information about a body on the tracks around 2.30 pm on Sunday, and a police team then recovered the body.
On searching the body, the police found a driving licence and a handwritten note with Pankaj’s address in Ghaziabad’s Raj Nagar Extension from the pocket, DSP Gupta said.
However, the GRP only found out Pankaj was an ED officer on Wednesday when Pankaj’s friend revealed that to them.
“The postmortem was on Monday, but we got to know he was an ED officer only when his son told me to talk to Pankaj’s friend, who said Pankaj was first working with the Income Tax Department and was later sent on deputation to the ED,” DSP Gupta told ThePrint.
A senior police officer with the GRP told ThePrint that on scanning the CCTV footage from the area where Pankaj died by suicide, it appeared that he jumped in between coaches while the train was moving.
“It looks like a suicide based on evidence as of now. We are in touch with the family to find out possible reasons that drove him to suicide as part of inquiry proceedings,” the senior officer said.
The CBI FIR recorded that Mumbai-based businessman Vipul Thakkar complained that Sandeep Singh and Pankaj asked for bribes to not arrest his son, Nihar Thakkar, in an ongoing ED case.
Though the complaint named both, the CBI named only Sandeep Singh as an accused in the FIR registered under Section 61 (2) (a) of the Bhartiya Nyay Snahita — dealing with offences amounting to criminal conspiracy — and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act — dealing with public servants who receive bribes.
While the CBI questioned Pankaj, it is unclear if the ED also initiated an investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, against Pankaj.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)