CBI court grants bail to 4 CGST officers in 50L bribery case

MUMBAI: A special CBI court on Thursday granted bail to four senior Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) officers, who were arrested in connection with an alleged ₹50 lakh bribery case registered on September 5. The court granted bail to CGST additional commissioner Deepak Sharma, and CGST superintendents Bijender Janawa, Nikhil Agrawal and Nitin Gupta. With this, all the accused arrested in connection with the case – six senior officers and two other individuals – are out on bail.
As per the prosecution, the complainant, a Goregaon-based businessman involved in pharmaceutical business, received summons from CGST superintendent Sachin Gokulka in connection to a purchase made by his company. When the complainant reported to the accused on September 4, he was confined by CGST officers and subjected to verbal abuse for 18 hours. The officers demanded a bribe of ₹80 lakh in return for not arresting him in an ongoing tax-evasion probe, alleged the complainant. After negotiation, the bribe amount was reduced to ₹60 lakh.
The businessman was released only after his cousin paid ₹30 lakh to a middleman – chartered accountant Raj Aggarwal – who is also an accused in the case. After release, the complainant registered a complaint with the CBI, which then arrested Gokulka, Aggarwal and another accused Abhishek Mehta on September 6. The three were released on default bail last week after the CBI failed to file a chargesheet within 60 days of arrest.
In the last week of October, the CBI arrested five more CGST officers – CGST additional commissioner Deepak Sharma, joint commissioner Rahul Kumar, and superintendents Bijender Janawa, Nikhil Agrawal and Nitin Gupta. Out of them, Rahul Kumar was released on bail on technical grounds – that he was not informed about the grounds of arrest at the time of arrest, and it was communicated to him orally only a day later.
The defence submitted that Deepak Sharma’s arrest was illegal as he was not handed over the copy of arrest memo at the time of arrest. They submitted that Sharma did not also receive any summons prior to the arrest. In the case of the three superintendents, the defence submitted that they were falsely implicated in the case. They argued that the only evidence is a vague statement made by the first informant, while observing that there is no concrete evidence of direct demand or acceptance of bribe. Seeking bail, the defence submitted that the accused would not tamper with the investigation process and would cooperate fully.
Special CBI judge SH Gwalani observed, “Nothing is produced on record by the prosecution to extend the judicial remand of the accused. No criminal antecedents have been brought on record by the prosecution.” Acknowledging the bail granted to the other co-accused in the case, the court held that the accused are liable to be released on bail since substantive investigation is also completed in the case.