Five DoPT officials booked for graft

New Delhi: The CBI on Tuesday booked five officials, including an under secretary, in the department of personnel and training (DoPT), on corruption charges and conducted searches at 11 places in the city. The DoPT is the nodal body governing CBI.

According to sources, under secretary Sanjay Mehta, section officers Hemant and Vijay Pal and assistant section officers R.K. Arora and Mahendra Singh — all belonging to the training division of the DoPT — have been booked for alleged irregularities in the payment of over Rs 18 lakh. The CBI also booked another person, Ashok, and private vendors Institute of Public Sciences, Institute of Public Administration, Kavita Ahluwalia, Kapil Book Store and Sahej Trading Corporation.

The action was taken on a complaint from V.K. Sinha, DoPT director (training), who alleged an internal probe found that out of total 67 payments of Rs 9.21 crore during 2017-18, eight bills of Rs 18.17 lakh were issued fraudulently in favour of the five vendors, they said.

Meanwhile, the CBI also registered a case against a former deputy director of the Enforcement Directorate for allegedly amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. Gurnam Singh from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Chandigarh, was on deputation in the ED between 2012 and 2017.

The value of the assets he amassed is 328 per cent more than his genuine income, the CBI alleged in an FIR.