The Anti-Corruption Bureau of the CBI questioned the now suspended bureaucrats — T.N. Chikkarayappa and S.C. Jayachandra — on Sunday and three others over the Rs. 5.7 crore that Income Tax officials recovered from them last week. A family member of one of the officials, a contractor and a bank manager were being questioned till late in the night at the CBI’s Ganganagar office.
An FIR has been registered, and sources said they are likely to be arrested on Monday. Investigators have also sealed off all the premises from where the new currency cache was recovered by IT sleuths. Officials also confirmed that the Enforcement Directorate has begun preliminary inquiries into the case.
The probes by the two Central agencies are said to be following a preliminary report submitted to the Reserve Bank of India by the I-T sleuths over the cash haul.
The CBI has no jurisdiction over the two State government employees. Mr. Chikkarayappa and Mr. Jayachandra are chief engineers of the Public Works Department. However, sources said the CBI used a technicality to investigate the matter. It registered a case against unidentified bank employees for illegally laundering Rs. 2,000 notes to begin the probe. I-T sleuths had recovered Rs. 5.7 crore in Rs. 2,000 denomination, allegedly sourced from a private bank, from the duo’s residences. Following a Supreme Court order of February 2016, the CBI has considered employees of the private bank as public servants, said sources.
I-T sleuths had also conducted searches at the house of a senior bank manager of the private bank who is said to have been the conduit for the exchange of old currency with Rs. 2,000 notes.
The case took a political turn with the Opposition parties alleging, at the recently concluded session of the State legislature in Belagavi, that the two bureaucrats are close to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Public Works Minister H.C. Mahadevappa and that documents recovered from their residences indicated the payments they had made.
