Suryakant Deshmukh (69) who retired as the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Literature and Culture, over 10 years ago was arrested following a raid on his Matunga residence. The CBI officers said the raid was conducted following a complaint filed against Deshmukh. However, they did not say if the complainant one of the applicants for the LPG agencies.

CBI officers recovered incriminating documents including a set of forged letterheads of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, correspondence between Deshmukh and N N Kaul (now dead) in New Delhi showing their involvement in a racket of allotting LPG agencies under the Minister's quota.

The CBI in their remand application prayed for police custody of the accused to enable them to find out the modus operandi of forging documents including bogus seals, rubber stampsetc and in order to find out the particulars of the affected persons who were promised allotments in exchange for huge sums of money.Deshmukh was produced before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Usha Iyer at the Esplanade court on Friday and has been remanded been remanded to police custody till July 28, 1998.