The infamous sex racket took another startling turn on Thursday with the Central Bureau of Investigation zeroing in on the principal secretary - planning and development, one of the senior most IAS officers in Jammu and Kashmir.
Mohammad Iqbal Khanday was detained for questioning by the CBI on Thursday evening, immediately after he came out of the district development board meeting, which was presided over by the chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Sources said Khanday was taken to the CBI camp at Humhama immediately after sleuths stopped his official vehicle near his residence at Sonwar.
Khanday is the first bureaucrat to be detained by the CBI, which has already arrested 15 persons, including two former ministers Ghulam Ahmed Mir and Raman Mattoo, a senior officer of the paramilitary and the local deputy superintendent of police.
The state High Court, which took suo moto cognisance of the sex racket has been monitoring the CBI investigation on a day to day basis.
So far the CBI has already produced one challan in the Srinagar chief judicial magistrate court charging nine persons for the rape of a minor girl, Yasmeena whose arrest led to the unearthing of scandal.