NEW DELHI: A special CBI court on Saturday took cognizance of a chargesheet filed recently in a bribery case wherein former special director of the agency Rakesh Asthana was given a clean chit.

Special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal observed that sufficient ground was not there to proceed against Asthana and CBI’s DSP Devender Kumar , who was arrested in 2018 and granted bail later.

Alleged middleman Manoj Prasad, who was charged in the case, his brother Someshwar Srivastava and father-in-law Sunil Mittal were, however, summoned on April 13.

Names of Srivastava and Mittal had cropped up during the investigation.

As a result, the court took cognizance of the chargesheet filed under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 385 (extortion) of IPC and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

CBI in its chargesheet said that there was no connection between Asthana and Manoj Prasad, and no evidence to prove that Asthana ever demanded or received a bribe to save Hyderabad-based businessman Satish Babu Sana in a money laundering case related to meat exporter Moin Qureshi .

In the last hearing, a war of words had broken out between two investigating officers (IOs), current and former. While former IO A K Bassi accused current IO Satish Dagar of shielding “big names” despite clinching evidence, the latter retorted, claiming that he had asked the former to join and assist in the probe six times but he had refused.

On October 25, 2018, Asthana was booked by then CBI director Alok Verma for criminal conspiracy, corruption and criminal misconduct under relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act on a complaint filed by Sana, who was being probed by Asthana as part of an investigation into money laundering by Moin Qureshi.

