Cloud over CBI role in whistleblower murder probe

Investigating Officer speaks of pressure from top brass to stall probe in alleged audio recording

March 03, 2015 01:32 am | Updated November 16, 2021 05:44 pm IST - Pune:

A sensational audio clip has raised questions over the CBI’s investigation of the murder of a whistleblower, Satish Shetty, in Talegaon, near here, in January 2010.

The clip, secretly recorded in July 2012 by Shetty’s brother, Sandeep Shetty, and broadcast recently on vernacular television channels, purports to unravel how the CBI’s top authorities in New Delhi tried to thwart the progress made by their own investigating officers in the investigation. In the recorded phone conversation between Mr. Sandeep Shetty, the then investigation officer, S.P. Singh, is heard saying that he is under tremendous pressure from the top CBI brass who wanted the investigation stalled.

“The Special Director was very angry… he lectured me for two hours as to why I took this case to the extent that I did,” Mr. Singh says.

On October 15, 2009, Satish Shetty lodged a complaint of massive land-grab against 13 people, including Virendra Mhaiskar, chairman and managing director of Mumbai-based Ideal Road Builders (IRB) Infrastructure Developers Ltd.

He accused Mr. Mhaiskar’s company and its subsidiary, Aryan Infrastructure Investment Pvt. Ltd., of acquiring nearly 1,100 acres of fertile government and private land in Maval taluk (near Pune) by forging documents and manipulating land records. Just months later, Shetty was hacked to death outside his home.

The IRB group is alleged to have extended huge unsecured loans to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s Purti Sugar and Power Pvt. Ltd. The company had scuppered plans to develop a mega township near Kamshet off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway after it came under the scanner for its alleged involvement in Shetty’s murder.

The case was transferred to the CBI on April 6, 2010 after Mr. Sandeep Shetty moved the Bombay High Court. In August 2014, he again moved the High Court following the CBI’s closure report. The court directed the CBI to re-investigate Mr. Satish Shetty’s complaint “in the interests of justice.”

The audio clip has Mr. Singh alleging that his superior officer ignored his proposals to make arrests despite providing ample evidence. In it, Mr. Singh is heard saying that his superior officer had told him that “vested interests were at play in this case.”

Mr. Singh is further heard alleging that senior CBI officers took bribes from Ministers to stall the case. “They [the CBI top brass] will not let me make any arrests,” Mr. Singh says .

In August 2014, there were allegations that the CBI was under political pressure as it submitted a closure report.

“The clip reveals the integrity of investigating officers like Mr. Singh and the fecklessness of those in the CBI,” Mr. Sandeep Shetty told TheHindu .

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