New Delhi:
Pawan Kumar Bansal, who was forced to resign last month as Railways Minister after a corruption scandal, is being questioned by the CBI in Delhi today.
CBI sources say Mr Bansal has been cooperating with the investigators and has denied any involvement in the bribery scam. He has reportedly been confronted by other statements and the CBI needs a few more hours to question him, sources add.
Mr Bansal's nephew was arrested for accepting 90 lakhs in cash in exchange for allegedly organizing a top spot on the Railways Board for a man named Mahesh Kumar. The deal had been set for 10 crores; the CBI says that the money that Mr Singla was caught with in Chandigarh was the first installment.
The CBI says that Mr Bansal's nephew, Vijay Singla, met Mr Kumar at his uncle's official residence in Delhi; the agency also says that Mr Bansal met with Mr Kumar in Mumbai in April and confirmed that he would be appointed to the Railways Board, which has seven members. The CBI claims it intercepted over 1,000 phone calls this year between Mr Kumar and Mr Bansal's nephew.
The members of the Railways Board are each assigned a specific area of operation (Mechanical, Engineering, Electrical, etc) and report directly to Railways Minister. Mr Kumar had been appointed in May to head the "Staff" section which involves dealing with personnel; he wanted to head "Electrical" because that would involve clearing contracts worth hundreds of crores, which could be lucrative with many offers of kickbacks, said the CBI.