By IANS,
Chandigarh : S.K. Sekhri, the zonal director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) here, was Monday remanded to three-day Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody by a special court.
Sekhri was arrested by CBI sleuths Sunday evening in New Delhi. He was trapped by officials of the investigating agency and was caught while allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs.200,000 from the owner of a Himachal Pradesh-based pharmaceutical company.
The CBI lawyer had, however, demanded a seven-day remand from the court.
“This is a very serious nature of crime as a senior official of the department is involved in it so we need at least a seven-day remand to complete our probe. The CBI has also seized certain documents and we need time to investigate them,” the CBI counsel told the court.
“There is a possibility of the involvement of other NCB officials in this case and it will become clear only after a thorough interrogation,” he added.
Sekhri was nabbed following a complaint by the pharmaceutical company owner based in Baddi industrial town in Himachal Pradesh.
Earlier Sekhri had called the complainant to his office Sep 3, but later refused to meet him. Then he struck a deal with him over the phone.
The complainant, who is also a resident of Delhi, filed a complaint with the anti-corruption branch of the CBI in Chandigarh.
CBI officials had also raided Sekhri’s house in Delhi’s Prashant Vihar and seized certain documents from there Sunday.
“We will try to trace other links in this case during the three-day questioning of Sekhri. So far we have not received any other complaint against this official,” CBI Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Mahesh Aggarwal told IANS.
“Our investigation is on and we are busy collecting vital proof to make our case stronger during the next hearing on Sep 10,” Aggarwal said.
Sekhri is the second senior NCB official to be arrested. His predecessor and Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, Saji Mohan, was arrested by Mumbai Police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officials with 12 kg heroin from a Mumbai suburb in January.
Mohan was earlier posted in Chandigarh as the zonal director of NCB, the central agency to curb narcotics trade in the country.