Judge prods CBI to complete Moin Qureshi probe, seeks details on 9 points

The Central Bureau of Investigation has told a special judge that the agency’s probe against Moin Qureshi and former CBI chief AP Singh was impacted due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is resuming the investigation in the case that lay at the center of the agency’s two top officers, Rakesh Asthana and Alok Verma, feuding with each other.

The CBI’s status report, submitted to special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal last month, said it had earlier halted this probe pending completion of the investigation in the 2018 bribery complaint filed by one of the suspects, Sathish Babu Sana. This complaint was directed at Rakesh Asthana who was supervising the probe. Asthana’s name was cleared in February this year. “However, not much progress could be made in the instant case since March 2020 onwards because of Covid-19 pandemic situation,” the CBI status report said.

At an earlier hearing in early August, the judge had frowned at the lack of forward movement in the February 2017 case registered against millionaire meat exporter Moin Qureshi. In this FIR, the CBI had alleged that Moin Qureshi, apart from his day job of a meat exporter, also worked as a middleman for “certain public servants” and was helped by AP Singh who retired as CBI chief in 2012.

The judge noted that the Moin Qureshi case, registered in February 2017 on information from the Enforcement Directorate, was yet to reach its logical end. “It appears to be moving at snail’s pace,” Aggarwal said, contrasting the pace with the “offshoot” of this case where a charge sheet had been filed earlier this year.

“Therefore, such open-ended investigations which keep on gathering dust for years together may seriously erode the credibility/faith of public at large in premier investigating agency of india i.e. CBI, which is deleterious to rule of law, more so, when one of the accused in the above RC is Sh A.P. Singh Ex. CZAR or Ex. Director of CBI,” Aggarwal wrote in his 7 August order.

Investigations into this case had gone for a toss after Sathish Sana Babu filed a corruption complaint against Rakesh Asthana. The allegation came around the time Asthana, who was overseeing the CBI’s special team put together to probe a bunch of complaints against Moin Qureshi, was pushing for Sathish Sana Babu’s arrest. Asthana had alleged that Sathish Sana Babu had paid off some CBI officials to stay out of trouble.

In this FIR registered by the CBI in October when Alok Verma was still the director, Babu alleged that he had paid a ₹2 crore bribe to Asthana via Dubai-based brothers - Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad - to be spared any action in the investigation linked to Qureshi. The money, he alleged, was paid over a 10-month period -- starting from December 2017. The CBI found no evidence to back this allegation against Asthana.