New Delhi : Delhi’s Rouse Avenue Court on Monday granted three more days police custody of S Bhaskaran, the chartered accountant of Karti Chidambaram, in connection with a corruption case for allegedly helping Chinese people in getting visas by flouting the rules.
The CBI said that they wanted to confront him with Karti and other accused.
The CBI has recovered 65,000 emails which will be used as evidence.
S. Bhaskararaman, was earlier remanded to four days custody by the court.
The probe agency had said that it needs to recover a few emails and Jor Bagh based property related information from him.
The CBI had told the court a sales deed recovered during the raids is important. “This sales deed is of a property bought in Jor Bagh and power of attorney is in the name of Bhaskararaman whereas this property was bought by Karti and his mother,” read the CBI’s remand paper.
The CBI told the court that a long list of material has to be recovered from him and their search operation was still on. The CBI accused Bhaskararaman of being non-cooperative and working at the behest of Karti.
The counsel appearing for Bhaskararaman had said that all the e-mails were obtained in the INX Media case by the agency.
Bhaskararaman was arrested by the CBI last Wednesday from Chennai, in connection with a case lodged against him and others for allegedly helping Chinese nationals in getting visas by flouting the rules.
Last Tuesday, the probe agency had conducted raids at 10 locations across the nation including the house of former Union Home Minister and Karti’s father P Chidambaram.
Later in the day, P Chidambaram had criticised the CBI’s move saying he wasn’t named in the FIR.
A senior CBI official said that Karti, P Chidambaram and Bhaskararaman were named as accused along with others including private firms. It is said that the senior Chidambaram allegedly helped them.
According to the FIR, a Mansa (Punjab) based private firm, Talwandi Sabo Power Limited, took the help of a middleman and allegedly paid Rs 50 lakh to get the visa issued for Chinese nationals which would help it in completing a project before the deadline.
“The Mansa (Punjab) based private firm was in the process of establishing a 1980 MW thermal power plant and establishing of the plant was outsourced to a Chinese company. The project was running behind schedule. In order to avoid penal action for the delay, the private company was trying to bring more and more Chinese persons, professionals for their site at District Mansa (Punjab) and needed Project VISAs over and above the ceiling imposed by Ministry of Home Affairs,” said the CBI official.
The official said that for this purpose, the representative of the private company approached a person based at Chennai through his close associate and thereafter they devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of the ceiling (maximum Project VISAs permissible for the company’s plant) by granting permission to re-use 263 Project VISAs allotted to the Chinese company’s officials.
In pursuance of this, the representative of the private company submitted a letter to the Ministry of Home Affairs seeking approval to re-use the Project VISAs allotted to this company, which was approved within a month and permission was issued to the company.
“A bribe of Rs 50 lakh was allegedly demanded by said private person based at Chennai through his close associate which was paid by the said Mansa based private company.
“The payment of said bribe was routed from Mansa based private company to said private person of Chennai and his close associate through a Mumbai based company as payment of false invoice raised for Consultancy and out of pocket expenses for Chinese VISAs related works whereas the private company based at Mumbai was never in any kind of work relating to VISAs rather it was in an entirely different business of industrial knives,” said the CBI official.
It has been alleged that the senior Chidambaram allegedly helped the Chinese to get visas by flouting rules.
–IANS