After 3 months, Bansal case still in the docks

New Delhi: Three months after senior bureaucrat B.K. Bansal and three of his family members’ tragic death, the Central Bureau of Investigation on December 28 acted against its deputy inspector general (DIG) Sanjeev Gautam by removing him from the Bansal suicide probe.

A source said that Mr Gautam, a 1995 batch Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officer (Customs & Excise), has finally been sent back to his parent cadre. The tragedy struck the family when Satya Bala Bansal (58) and her daughter Neha (28) were found hanging inside their house at Neelkanth Apartment in East Delhi on July 19, within days of her husband B.K. Bansal’s arrest by the CBI on corruption charges. And within two months, on September 27, the father-son duo — B.K. Bansal (59) and Yogesh (28) — was also found hanging in the same flat.

Bansal was a former director-general in the ministry of corporate affairs. The mother and daughter had left a suicide note blaming CBI officials for harassing the family during the raid and Bansal’s arrest. The father-son duo had also, in a suicide note mailed to the then CBI chief and media houses, accused a senior CBI officer for harassing them. Bansal had even named a top politician of the ruling BJP for getting the bribery case lodged against him. However, the police is yet to make any headway in the case.

The senior bureaucrat had in his suicide note mentioned that his family was tortured by Mr Gautam and his team members. He had named several persons, including Mr Gautam, superintendent of police Amrita Kaur, deputy superintendent of police Rekha Sangwan and investigating officer Harnam Singh, apart from an unnamed head constable, for making his family’s life “hell”.

The Supreme Court had earlier in November issued notices to the Centre and the CBI on a PIL seeking a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the controversial suicide case.

However, the police is yet to make any headway in the case. Two men who were spotted delivering Bansal’s suicide note at a courier office in Laxmi Nagar haven’t been identified too. The police has not even filed an FIR in the case. While the Delhi police is yet to summon the CBI officers for questioning, the CBI is said to have conducted an internal inquiry against the team that had arrested Bansal and is accused of harassing him. The police says the inquest proceeding report is yet to be received, depending on which an FIR could be filed.