Thaindian News

Gandhinagar, March 9 (IANS) A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court here Wednesday night granted five days’ remand of nine people, including senior customs officers, who were arrested a day ago in connection with search operations and raids conducted across Gujarat and other parts of the country to bust a racket of undervalued clearance of voluminous goods.

Among the nine remanded for interrogation custody were seven customs and central excise officers of the rank of superintendents down to inspectors.

The racket involved large scale bribery, allegedly of these officers, in clearing precious metal consignments as scrap material after taking big amounts in underhand deals from Customs House agents.

More than a hundred CBI officers carried out search operations in over 30 premises nationwide including the bulk of them in Gujarat, besides Mumbai and Delhi leading to the arrests. The CBI judge S.H. Vora allowed the five-day custody of the accused against the plea of ten days’ remand.

Ahmedabad customs Superintendents Chandu Kalal, K.C. Suresh and Akil Barot, Superintendent at Mundra, O.P. Pandey, Customs Inspectors at Surat - Devendra Sanghvan and N.B. Chauhan; and customs agents Mehul Zaveri, Tushar Vaghela, Girish Malpani - were sent to five days’ remand.

The CBI sought remand on the ground that the arrested people indulged in malpractice and were allegedly involved in large-scale corruption that took place between July and October last year. The CBI alleged that it required their remand to investigate the whole nexus.