Preserve phone, Delhi High Court tells CBI No. 2 Rakesh Asthana; says no arrest till Monday

Rakesh Asthana, the CBI special director named in a corruption case, cannot be arrested till Monday when his petition against the case will be heard again, the Delhi High Court said on Tuesday, ordering the CBI to maintain status quo. But Asthana has been ordered by the court to “preserve” all his electronic devices at the CBI’s request which had expressed concern that an attempt might be made to erase evidence on devices such as computer and mobile phone.

Asthana had approached the Delhi High Court to seek protection against arrest. Asthana’s petition came hours after CBI officer Devender Kumar, who was arrested yesterday, asked the high court to cancel the bribery case filed against them.

In his petition, Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar said he was being made “a scapegoat” and the case filed against them was false, frivolous and an afterthought.

Kumar insisted that he was an “upright police officer” with an excellent service record. The officer said he had been investigating the case against meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi and others and was implicated because he had unearthed the truth in this case and was going to arrest “several accused person”.

The matter was mentioned before a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice VK Rao by senior advocate Dayan Krishnan. The court listed the plea for hearing before an appropriate bench in the post lunch session on Tuesday.

Kumar, who was earlier the investigating officer in a case involving Moin Qureshi, was arrested on Monday by the CBI on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of businessman Sathish Sana, who had alleged to have paid bribes to get relief in the case. As a local court Tuesday sent him to seven days CBI custody, the agency announced he had been suspended from service.

The case against Asthana has been registered on a complaint by a Hyderabad-based businessman, Sana Satish Babu, who alleged that two Dubai-based brothers – Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad – claimed that they were acting on behalf of the CBI special director and allegedly struck a deal for ₹5 crore to protect him in a case that the agency registered against controversial meat exporter Moin Qureshi. Former CBI director AP Singh is also an accused in the case.