Rakesh Asthana FIR - All accused discharged by court

New Delhi: The case that was the basis of an unprecedented fight between Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has totally collapsed in the court.

Earlier the CBI had given a clean chit to Asthana and another official Deputy Superintendent of Police Devender Kumar saying they didn’t seek or got any bribe from Hyderabad-based businessman Sana Satish Babu to save him in an agency case against meat exporter Moin Qureshi. 

Now a court has discharged the rest of the three accused - Manoj Prasad, Somesh Prasad and Sunil Mittal, who were accused of paying money to Asthana on behalf of Satish Babu - in the case.

“……no inference of any conspiracy having been hatched amongst the accused persons can be drawn and as such the prosecution has failed to make out any prima facie case or any sufficient grounds to proceed against the accused persons for the offence of conspiracy. In view of the above analysis and discussion based on evaluation of the entire evidence including statements of witnesses recorded u/s.164 Cr.P.C. and u/s.161 Cr.P.C., the documents placed on record, I am of the considered opinion that the prosecution has failed to make out any prima facie case against any of the three - A-1 Manoj Prasad, A-2 Somesh Prasad @Someshwar Srivastava and A-3 Sunil Mittal – accused persons…..” stated CBI special judge Vinay Kumar Gupta while discharging the three accused persons.

Judge Gupta said the agency did not produce relevant documents to show that the mobile conversations were intercepted in the case following the due process of law. In all, the CBI intercepted 18 mobile conversations during the probe against Asthana but the judge declined the intercepted conversations as evidence as the due procedure was not followed.

The CBI under Alok Verma had stated that Asthana demanded Rs 5 crore as a bribe to save Satish Babu and got part of the bribe money through Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad and Sunil Mittal. But the judge found the CBI evidence in this regard full of contradictions.

The judge said: “The entire evidence on record relating to Rs.1.95 Crores (the alleged part payment of bribe money) is full of inherent contradictions in the various statements of the complainant himself, contradiction in the statement of the complainant and other witnesses making them untruthful and unreliable, inadmissibility of statement of PW3 (prosecution witness number three) Shitij Dewan, manipulation in and inadmissibility of Cashbook, missing of certain persons who are the crucial links in the entire transaction from transportation, keeping and taking away etc. of the money from one place to another, and delivery thereof to PW2 Punit Kharbanda, inherent improbability of availability of Rs.1.95 Crores with the complainant, non-examination of various crucial witnesses, affects the sustainability of the prosecution case and falls much much short of any sufficient grounds for proceeding with the case.”

The Judge found many holes in the statements of Sana Satish Babu, the alleged complaint in the case and termed them as contradictory. The judge held Satish Babu as “untruthful and unreliable”.

“In view of the various contradictory statements of the complainant himself, the inconsistencies and contradictions vis-a-vis other witnesses and documents placed on record what complainant has stated cannot be accepted without any corroboration. What complainant has stated has not been corroborated by any other evidence,” said Judge Gupta.

The CBI claimed that it seized two mobile phones from Sana Satish Babu during the probe as through them he remained in touch with accused persons but the independent witnesses allegedly authenticating the seizure later in their statements didn’t mention any seizure of mobile phones or retrieval of data from them.