CBI recovers 5 audio clips of Rajendra Kumar

The CBI on Wednesday claims to have recovered five “audio clips” from the email account of Rajendra Kumar, principal secretary to Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, purportedly carrying his oral instructions to allegedly “influence” and “manipulate” contracts in favour of a private firm.

Sources said, “The agency sleuths are forensically examining the authenticity of the voice in the audio clips. CBI officials have also taken voice sample to Kumar, a 1989-batch IAS officer of AGMU cadre, to compare it with the voice in the audio clips”. During preliminary scrutiny, agency sleuths have found that Kumar’s voice samples match with ones on audio clips, sources alleged. “It appears that Kumar was trying to ‘influence’ and ‘manipulate’ certain contracts (awarded between 2011-13) in favour of a private firm”, they said. The agency will soon call Kumar for questioning in this regard.

“Kumar, who initially refused to share his email password to sleuths during his detailed examination, had later provided the details. Scrutiny of his email account resulted in discovery of five audio recordings clips to the period of 2011-13 which carry his purported instructions to the officers handling tenders and contracts to allegedly manipulate and favour Endeavour Systems, which is also named in the FIR,” sources said.

The CBI said that it has registered a case against Kumar and others on allegations against the officer that he abused his official position by “favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders from Delhi government departments”. Kumar has been booked under Section 120-B of the IPC.