Court raps CBI in IPS officer bribery case

NEW new new delhi: A Delhi margaret court on midweek questioned the exchange Bureau of Investigation on its probe into Haryana cadre IPS officer Deepak Gahlawat’s alleged involvement in a Rs. 3-crore bribery case, saying that there was no evidence to prove that the accused influenced any public servant, thereby failing to show a larger criminal conspiracy.Special Judge Sushant Changotra made the observations while presiding over a hearing on the custody remand of Gahlawat, arrested by the federal agency on Tuesday. The court subsequently sent him to one days’ CBI custody.CBI arrested Gahlawat on Tuesday over allegations of receiving illegal gratification of Rs. 3 crores for exercising his personal influence over an unknown public servant posted at CBI, to secure favourable relief in a 5,000-crore counterfeit medicine racket case in Puducherry.The CBI prosecutor claimed that Gahlawat had already received Rs. 1 crore as part of the deal, from N Raja, the alleged prime accused in the medicine racket.The court on Wednesday questioned as to why CBI had failed to trace the alleged CBI officer Gahlawat was purportedly in touch with, despite being in the investigating agency’s custody for nearly 24 hours since his arrest.The court said, “Till date, no effort has been made to know as to any public servant posted in CBI was ever approached by accused Deepak Gahlawat or he had made any attempt to exercise his personal influence over such public servant”.The court remarked that the responses of the CBI’s investigating officer were “totally unfathomable”.The prosecution had initially sought a five day custody of Gahlawat, saying that a larger conspiracy was sought to be unearthed and the accused was required to be confronted with co-accused persons.Meanwhile, Gahlawat’s counsels argued that he was being made a scape goat in the case and that while the co-accused had come to meet him at his office, no such bribe demand was made.The case centres around an alleged counterfeit and spurious medicines network estimated to be worth around Rs. 5,000 crores.The racket came to light last year after the Puducherry Police and the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CID) conducted raids on manufacturing and storage facilities.Investigators allegedly found large quantities of raw materials and packaging used to manufacture fake pharmaceutical products with labels and packaging resembling those of genuine drug manufacturers.Puducherry Police arrested alleged kingpin of the racket N Raja in December last year. Further investigation pointed to the alleged involvement of several influential persons and public servants and the case was subsequently transferred to CBI, which registered a fresh FIR in March 2026.Gahlawat’s name surfaced after N Raja allegedly approached him to influence the agency’s investigation on the promise that the former had connections in CBI.In response, Gahlawat allegedly demanded a bribe of Rs. 3 crores to secure Raja relief in the counterfeit medicine racket, of which an advance amount of Rs. 1 crore was already given to him.The agency registered another FIR on June 8 in connection with the bribery case, naming Gahlawat, currently serving as Regional Director of Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, N Raja, Delhi Police Inspector Pradeep Kumar, and other unknown public servants and private persons, under sections of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act and criminal conspiracy.The CBI had last month arrested Delhi Police Crime Branch Inspector Pradeep Kumar in the case, for allegedly acting as an intermediary in the bribery.