Court sends two persons to 4-day ED custody

New Delhi : A Delhi court on Thursday sent a retired chief engineer and a contractor to four-day ED custody in connection with a money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the tendering process of the Delhi Jal Board.

Special judge Bhupinder Singh sent Jagdish Kumar Arora, a retired chief engineer, and contractor Anil Kumar Aggarwal, both arrested on Wednesday, to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate after the federal agency claimed that their custodial interrogation was required to unearth the “larger conspiracy”.

In its application seeking the accused’s seven-day custody, the ED submitted that the accused were required to be confronted with the digital data recovered during investigation.

The ED further claimed that some other people are being summoned in the case and the accused were required to be confronted with them. The federal agency had conducted raids in this case in July last year.

The ED is conducting investigation in two separate matters of irregularities in the tendering process of the DJB and its criminal case stems from an FIR of the CBI and from the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) of the Delhi government.

The CBI FIR alleged that officials of the DJB gave “undue advantage” to NKG Infrastructure Limited while awarding tender to the

company for supply, installation, testing and commissioning of electro-magnetic flow meters in connivance with officials of NBCC (lndia) Limited.

The second allegation pertains to the ACB complaint of November, 2022 where it was stated that DJB awarded a tender for setting up automotive bill payment collection machines (kiosks) in its different offices for facilitating consumers in bill payment.