Rs 50,000 monthly rent paid for IAS officer's stay in guest house

NEW DELHI: Delhi police today secured six-day custody of senior IAS officer Ravi Inder Singh from a Special Court on charges that he sought personal gains, including the cost of his stay at a guest house, from a private firm for passing sensitive information to unauthorised persons.

"The IAS officer posted as a director in the Union Home Ministry, used to stay at a guest house instead of living in the official accommodation. The rent of the house was Rs 50,000 per month which was paid by a private firm," Public Prosecutor Rajeev Mohan told Special Judge Sangeeta Dhingra Sehgal.

The prosecutor sought 10 days custodial interrogation of Singh and his co-accused Vineet Kumar, Chairman-cum Managing Director of Temptation Foods Private Ltd, on the ground that they were to be confronted with their intercepted calls.

The court, however, sent them in police custody till November 30.

Singh and Kumar were formally arrested last night following their extensive quizzing in detention by the Delhi police's Special Cell.

Arguing for the custodial remand of the accused, Mohan also alleged that a sum of Rs 21 lakh was transferred to an account opened at a branch of Bank of Maharashtra in the name of Singh's spouse, a house-wife, in the address of the guest house at posh Greater Kailash enclave here.

The said bank account still had balance of Rs 15 lakh, he claimed.

He also alleged that Singh was using four mobile phones out of which three were obtained on fictitious identity.

"The officer had concealed three mobile phones and stopped using them on November 16 after he came to know from Sanjeev Arora, a Vodafone company executive, that calls were intercepted on those phones," the prosecutor submitted.

The prosecutor claimed that Singh was to be confronted with as many as 12,000 intercepted calls as he was using code words like software for flesh trade and hardware for accommodation which he sought as benefits for the works performed as officer.

Mohan also claimed that Singh, a director in the internal security division of the ministry, had leaked information pertaining to a US-based telecom company, Telcordia, for illegal gratification.

Senior counsel APS Ahluwalia and advocate O P Wadhwa opposed the contention of police seeking remand saying that the officer had already cooperated with the investigating agency and had been in their detention for more than 48 hours.

Jaideep Thakkar, counsel for Kumar also submitted that there was no need to send the accused in custodial remand as police had nothing else to recover from him.