new delhi, september 30 Three thousand CBI officials today swooped down on 70 officials of “corruption-prone departments” — as CBI Director U S Misra put it — in the agency’s biggest countrywide raid ever. The catch at the end of the day included four officials above the joint secretary level. Consider this:

• Mumbai Commissioner of Income Tax (Appellate Tribunal) B R Meena owns 18 plots, and a palatial house worth Rs 1 crore in Jaipur. The CBI says it found Rs 8.5 lakh cash in his official accommodation in IT Colony on Pedder Road, Mumbai. The agency put his illegal income at Rs 46 lakh. The immovable property is yet to be valued.

• P.K. Aggrawal, Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax, Delhi, owns assets to the tune of Rs 45 lakh, says CBI.

• The Disproportionate Assets (DA) case against the Income Tax Commissioner (Appeals), Orissa, is worth Rs 27 lakh.

• The DA case against DG, National Academy of Customs, Excise and Narcotics, Hazaribagh, is worth Rs 50 lakh, CBI says.

• The Superintendent, Central Excise, Chennai, owns assets worth Rs 1.1 crore.

• The Superintendent of Central Excise (Anti Evasion), Faridabad, owns assets worth Rs 1.2 crore, including Rs 10 lakh cash.

• The CBI found false customs duty drawback to the tune of Rs 3.19 crore, with help of a Customs and Preventive Officer, in Mumbai. Also booked in a disproportionate assets case is Assistant Commissioner of Customs (Cargo), Sahar, Mumbai.

• An Australian firm duped ONGC of around Rs 94 crore through a “false insurance claim”. The Project Manager of Clough Engineering was awarded works at offshore oil fields for Rs 1,280 crore. The company was paid Rs 112.9 crore by the ONGC, though it had bought an insurance policy worth just Rs 17.36 cr.

• Another case involved the erstwhile Global Trust Bank. Bank officials granted credit limits amounting to Rs 19.5 crore, circumventing the embargo by the RBI. The recipients — Director of M/s Beautiful Relators Ltd and M/s Crystal Gems — have been booked. The same officials allegedly connived with the director of PEPCO to sanction $15.5 million when even land for the project was not acquired. They also released Rs 16 crore without security.

• A dozen railway wagons worth Rs 53 lakh “disappeared” from Vishakapatnam. The wagons were supposedly sold as junk. The suspect in the case is the Deputy Chief Engineer of Southern Railways, Thiruvananthapuram.

• The CBI also raided the houses of former Punjab minister Nirmal Singh Kahlon in Chandigarh and Amritsar over the recruitment scam.

• The president, vice-president and secretary of the Central Council of Homeopathy, New Delhi, accused of arbitrarily granting recognition to various homeopathy colleges.

‘Leak will be probed’

NEW DELHI: After a language daily carried a report on the raids even as they were on, CBI chief U.S. Misra said the leak would be investigated. ‘‘Leaks can take place in such a large exercise. But we will look into it very seriously,” he said.

On its front page, the daily listed the raids, most of which went as per the report. Sources said that many officials fled their homes well before the CBI came knocking at their doors this morning. “We have an internal mechanism to keep a check...there is a ‘CBI against CBI’ which keeps a tab on the black sheep. The phones of many CBI officers are kept under surveillance. The files requiring sanction before raids go to various departments. So secrecy at times is compromised,’’ said Misra. — ENS

CBI displays ‘big fish’ in its corruption net  

198 raids , 54 cities, 58 cases; 70 public servants, including 4 Jt Secy-level officials, 11 Customs & Excise officials, 3 I-T officials, 4 BSNL officials raided

DELHI • Inspector Ishwar Singh, Investigating Officer in the match-fixing scandal in 2000 involving Hansie Cronje; CBI says Rs 1.07 lakh cash, assets worth Rs 75 lakh found • P K Aggrawal, Asst IT Commissioner; assets worth Rs 45 lakh found, says CBI • Satyendra Nath Girothra, Institute Engineer, IIT; had Rs 56 lakh in cash, four flats, Gurgaon farmhouse, says CBI • Central Council of Homeopathy’s Dr S P S Bakshi, President, Dr Ramjee Singh Vice-President, Dr Lalit Verma, Secretary • Hamidullah Bhat, Director, National Commissioner of Urdu; has Rs 3.06 lakh in cash, property worth Rs 1.08 crore • Modi Xerox officials allegedly involved in fraud causing loss of Rs 50 lakh to BSNL

KOLKATA • Gorachand Chaterjee, superintendent, NCB, Rs 26 lakh in cash found, says CBI

HAZARIBAGH • C M Chandolia, Addl DG, National Academy of Customs, Excise, Narcotics

BERHAMPUR • Ashok Kumar Gautam, Commissioner, Income Tax

PUNJAB • N S Kahlon, former minister of rural development, J S Kesar, former financial commissioner, Mandip Singh, DC Moga, for 2003 recruitment scam

MUMBAI • B R Meena, IT Commissioner; CBI says documents for 18 plots, house in Jaipur, Rs 8 lakh in cash found • B S Hans, Asst Commissioner, Customs • S V Ramani, Director, PEPCO, involved in Global Trust Bank scam

CHENNAI • P Sridharan, Project Manager, Clough Engineering Ltd. Australia, caused a loss of Rs 94 cr to ONGC See page 3