A day after his residence and locations of people known to him were raided, the CBI on Sunday registered a case against senior 1988-batch IAS officer B L Agarwal, who is currently posted as Secretary Higher Education with the state government. Agarwal, against whom the CBI had registered two cases in 2010 when he was the state’s health secretary, has been accused of criminal conspiracy for offering Rs 1.5 crore to private people as “gratification” in return for help in a case against him under investigation by the CBI, the agency said. The FIR, filed on Sunday against Agarwal, mentions the names of Bhagwan Singh and Syed Burhanuddin and some unknown persons. It says that through Singh, Agarwal attempted to give Rs 1.5 crore to Burhanuddin so the matter could be “reasonably settled.” It states that Burhanuddin, with the aliases of O P Singh and O P Sharma, claimed to “be in the Prime Minister’s Office”. All three met on February 11 and Agarwal agreed to pay Rs 1.5 crore to influence the case, especially for the CBI case to be shifted to the Economic Offences Wing of the state government.

Source: Indian Express February 19, 2017 20:37 UTC