Dubey whistle falls on CBI ears, raids on

Although the CBI has dismissed his murder as the fallout of a roadside robbery, it has begun probing the corruption charges Dubey had levelled. Three days ago, the CBI quietly registered the first of what it says will be a clutch of criminal cases on the basis of complaints made by Dubey.

The FIR in the case was placed in a sealed cover in a Patna court on September 26. CBI Director U S Misra told The Indian Express to expect more cases.

‘‘This is only the first case we have filed. More cases will definitely be registered as we look into each and every allegation and complaint made by Satyendra Dubey,’’ Misra said.

He confirmed that they had recovered enough material to possibily register a case of disproportionate assets against a top NHAI official.

In fact, the FIR, dealing with irregularities in execution of road work in package V-B, covering 80 km, of the Delhi-Kolkata stretch of the GQ, names two persons against whom searches were conducted in Delhi today. Also named are a senior official of a multinational company and ‘‘other’’ officials.

The FIR states that work on this stretch was done by ‘‘unapproved/unauthorised and incompetent subcontractors at sufficiently less rates, against the provisions of the contract agreement… with the intention to obtain undue pecuniary advantage for themselves and corresponding loss to the Government.’’

In short, the CBI’s first criminal case deals with Dubey’s allegation on sub-contracts which had been refuted by his senior S K Soni, the then project director. Soni is one of the three persons named in the FIR. After searching his house in NOIDA today, the CBI said they had recovered FDRs worth Rs 15 lakh.

The subject matter of the FIR is a huge Rs 434.7 crore contract signed between NHAI and a joint venture of Larsen and Toubro (L&T) and Hindustan Construction Company (HCC).

The contract was for four-laning and strengthening of the existing two lane highway of NH-2 in Bihar and Jharkhand. According to the FIR, the contracts blatantly violated their contractual agreement that no sub-contracting above 10 per cent of its value of the contract could be done without seeking approval of the NHAI head office.

The CBI states in its FIR that the contractor ‘‘unauthorisedly entered into an agreement’’ with Bhardwaj Construction Company (BCC) of Hazaribagh, Jharkhand for a value of Rs 33.2 crore. A second agreement for Rs 67 crore was signed with M/s ECI of Hyderabad and the rates on which the sub-contracts were parceled out were ‘‘much less’’ than the rates at which the contracts were originally awarded.

According to the CBI, there is a second supervisory contract which the FIR deals with on the same GQ stretch, signed between NHAI and M/s RITES-HALCROW.

This contract was also signed in March 2002 and later these contractors too engaged BCC and ECI for earth work and bridge work on the same stretch. These contracts were together worth Rs 25.8 crore.

The CBI has alleged that even when no approval was received from the NHAI headquarters, sub-contracting of over Rs 100 crore was done, which was more than the permissible 10 per cent, and that the officials involved abused their ‘‘position’’ and ‘‘committed criminal misconduct.’’