Prem Kumar, special judge of the Central Bureau of Investigation, on Friday remanded R Perumalswamy, personal assistant to Minister of State for Finance Gingee Ramachandran, to ten days' police custody remand.
The anti-corruption branch of the CBI had on Thursday arrested Perumalswamy for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 400,000 from Anurag Vardhan, a 1994 batch Indian Revenue Service officer, to help Vardhan get a transfer to Mumbai from New Delhi.
Judge Prem Kumar, who sent Perumalswamy to police custody till June 2, also remanded two other accused -- IRS officers Anurag Vardhan and S Padmanabhan, a project associate at the Centre for Atmospheric Science, IIT, Delhi and a friend of Perumalswamy -- to four days in police custody for interrogation.
The judge has directed the CBI to produce the two in court on May 27.
"The main accused Perumalswamy, alias 'Babu', is remanded to police custody for 10 days," judge Prem Kumar said in his two page order.
The CBI alleged that Vardhan had struck a deal with Perumalswamy through a Chennai-based chartered accountant, A Krishnamurthy, to arrange a transfer from Delhi to Mumbai. The CBI, in its remand application, said that Krishnamurthy had asked Perumalswamy to go to Vardhan's house to pick up Rs 400,000.
Perumalswamy was arrested on Thursday as soon as he came out the Safdarjung residence of Vardhan after allegedly accepting the bribe. S Padmanabhan was with him at the time of the arrest.
"As it is a case of a racket of transfers and postings of top officials by demanding and offering huge sums of money, and even involves the personal assistant of the minister of state for finance, it has wider ramifications. The seizures made after searches were conducted at several places in Delhi and Chennai have yet to be scrutinized and the entire conspiracy is yet to be unearthed. Other officials of the finance ministry, said to be involved in this racket, too have yet to be identified," Prem Kumar said in his remand order.
"Under the circumstances, I feel that it is in the interest of justice to allow custodial interrogation of the accused. This will help unearth the entire conspiracy and find out the truth," he added.
The judge has allowed Anurag Vardhan's wife and two children (twins) to visit him daily between 6.00 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Prem Kumar also directed the CBI to verify the authenticity of the claims made by Vardhan's counsels Dinesh Mathur and Siddharth Luthra that the children suffer from a speech problem and eat only when Vardhan feeds them.
He directed that in the event the accused were taken to another place outside Delhi, they may be examined by a government doctor.
The judge also questioned Padmanabhan on his role in the whole affair.
"I was sitting in a room. Perumalswamy and Vardhan went to another room and when he came back he had a packet in his hand," said S Padmanabhan.
"Did Perumalswamy tell you what the payment was for?" the judge asked. "No, sir," replied Padmanabhan.
"Then what kind of a friend do you have who hides things from you," the judge remarked.
"All the three accused have been booked under section 120B for criminal conspiracy. We have also booked Perumalswamy and Vardhan under section 12 of Prevention of Corruption Act," Manohar Lal, public prosecutor, told the court.
Vardhan had been transferred to Delhi in August last year and had been under CBI surveillance for some time before he was arrested.
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh had on Thursday suspended the transfer orders of 54 senior income tax officials following Perumalswamy's arrest.
