Governor post, RS seat for `100 crore!

New Delhi: A multi-state job racket, wherein scamsters promised plum posts like Governorship of a state and member of Rajya Sabha, has been busted by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI claimed that the scamsters were allegedly offering these posts for a price of Rs 100 crore.

Four suspects, identified as Ravindra Vithal Naik of Karnataka's Belgaum, Kamalakar Premkumar Bandgar of Maharashtra's Latur and Delhi-NCR-based Mahendra Pal Arora and Abhishek Boora, were arrested after the agency conducted searches at seven locations in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Another accused, Mohammed Aijaz Khan, managed to flee during the search operation after allegedly assaulting CBI officers. A special CBI court, however, granted bail to all four suspects.

The CBI alleged that Bandgar flaunted his "connections" with highly placed officials while impersonating a senior CBI officer. Aiming to get huge illegal gratification, the suspects allegedly targeted private persons by falsely assuring them that they would arrange seats in Rajya Sabha and fix appointments as Governor or chairman in different Central government-run organisations. Through its sources, the agency came to know that Bandgar had boasted before Boora about how he could get the appointments to the pivotal roles using "connections with high-ranking officials".

In its FIR, the CBI claimed that the accused were trying to cheat individuals by falsely assuring them of candidature for Rajya Sabha for remuneration of a whopping Rs 100 crore. To impress their hapless victims, the CBI further claimed, the alleged scamsters would drop names of senior political functionaries and bureaucrats. The FIR also claims that Bandgar even posed as a senior CBI officer to threaten police personnel in police stations to influence investigations of ongoing cases and grant favours to people known to him.