Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 12

Upping its ante against Delhi’s bureaucracy and the BJP-led Centre, the AAP on Sunday accused the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of “protecting” some corrupt IAS officers of Delhi alleging a nexus between them.

The party claimed that as many corrupt IAS officers are scared that once “services” and Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) come back to Arvind Kejriwal they will face strict action, the IAS association is reportedly planning to approach the Supreme Court to prevent the same.

The allegations came days after the CBI recovered incriminating documents of a top IAS officer of the Union Territory (UT) cadre along with those related to many serving and retired bureaucrats during a raid on Palika Services Officers Institute (PSOI) in Pancharipuri this week.

The AAP slammed the CBI for keeping the raids “surreptitious” and alleged that the BJP-led Central government is “blackmailing the Delhi bureaucracy and now want services to be kept under the Centre”.

The searches, which went on for two days, revealed that a caterer of the officers’ club was allegedly acting as a middleman and cracking out deals between the CBI and IAS officers embroiled in corruption cases.

Apart from passports, documents showing hawala transactions to the tune of crores of rupees of IAS officers of UT cadre were also seized from the caterer of officers club during the exercise.

The services of the accused caterer, who was earlier running a canteen at CBI office, was also used by several serving IAS officers of Delhi to transfer funds illegally and during the raid, cash up to Rs 3.6 crore, jewelllery worth Rs 1.6 crore and 20 Rolex luxury watches were reportedly recovered from the caterer’s cupboard besides passports of some officials, said the party.

AAP chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj said the CBI has yet not disclosed the names of the IAS officers, claiming among the officers who are under scanner are some IAS officers who were earlier protected by the Sheila Dikshit government then by LG Najeeb Jung and later by the Modi government in CNG fitness scam.

The Kejriwal-led party said some corrupt IAS officers lobbied hard when Arvind Kejriwal came to power, and the Central government illegally took away ACB and “services” from the elected government.