Governorship, Rajya Sabha seat for Rs 100 crore! CBI busts multi-state racket

By FnF Correspondent | PUBLISHED: 25, Jul 2022, 16:48 pm IST | UPDATED: 25, Jul 2022, 23:09 pm IST

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday busted a multi-state racket of imposters and arrested four of them for allegedly attempting to cheat people of Rs 100 crore with false promises of arranging Rajya Sabha seats and governorship to them.

The central agency had conducted searches recently in connection with the case, and four members of the gang were arrested, they said. One of the accused fled during the search operation after assaulting CBI officers, the officials said. A separate FIR has been filed against him at the local police station for assaulting agency officials, they said.

In its FIR, the CBI has named Kamalakar Premkumar Bandgar of Maharashtra's Latur, Ravindra Vithal Naik of Karnataka's Belgaum, and Delhi-NCR-based Mahendra Pal Arora, Abhishek Boora and Mohammed Aijaz Khan in connection with the case, the officials said.

It is alleged that Bandgar was posing as a senior CBI officer and flaunting his "connections" with highly placed officials and had asked Boora, Arora, Khan and Naik to bring any sort of work that he could fix in lieu of payment of huge illegal gratification.

They conspired with "the sole ulterior motive of cheating private persons by falsely assuring them for an arrangement of seats in Rajya Sabha, appointment as governor, appointment as chairman in different government-run organisations under central government ministries and departments against huge pecuniary consideration," the FIR alleged.

The agency came to know through its source that Boora discussed with Bandgar how the latter's purported connection with high-ranking officials who play "pivotal roles" in appointments be exploited to get the work done. It surfaced that the accused were attempting to cheat people by falsely assuring them of candidature for Rajya Sabha against a huge consideration to the tune of Rs 100 crores, the FIR alleged.

The CBI received information that they would drop names of senior bureaucrats and political functionaries to impress clients approaching them for some work either directly or through middlemen like Abhishek Boora, it stated.

It also emerged that Bandgar posed as a senior CBI officer and threatened police officials of various police stations to grant favours to people known to him or to influence investigations of ongoing cases, the FIR alleged.