CBI ex-officer linked to illegal CDRs’ firm

Two of the accused (wearing slippers) are produced by the police on Sunday. (Photo: Asian Age)

A former joint director of the CBI was one of the top executives of the detective agency that allegedly obtained call record details (CDRs) illegally for its clients, the Delhi police said on Sunday.

The police has arrested four people in the snooping case, including a detective who was earlier booked for allegedly obtaining BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s call detail records.

The arrested persons were identified as Pankaj Tiwari, Jaiveer Rathore, Aditya Sharma alias Arpit, and Sanjeev Chaudhary. They were allegedly involved in procuring and selling CDRs of the targets, whom they were spying on. They procured the CDRs with the help of Narendra Kumar, a constable of Uttar Pradesh police. The constable has been arrested by the Delhi police team from Kanpur. “We got information that a detective agency in Janakpuri, identified as Scorpion Verification and Consultancy Private Limited, is procuring CDRs for '7,000 to '10,000. A decoy customer approached the detective agency and met the owner, Pankaj Tiwari, and asked him to produce a sample CDR before settling a deal with him. Tiwari, after charging an initial part amount of '5,000 from the decoy, produced an already procured CDR and after verifying its authenticity, he was apprehended,” said Rabindra Yadav, joint CP (crime branch).

During interrogation, Tiwari revealed that he used to purchase these CDRs from Jaiveer Singh Rathore, who owns a media and detective agency. At his instance, Jaiveer Singh Rathore was apprehended.

“Jaiveer Singh Rathore revealed that he got all the CDRs with the help of Narendra Kumar, a constable in the UP police. Narendra is posted in surveillance cell at the office of the inspector-general of police, Kanpur. Rathore used to collect orders for the CDRs from various detective agencies for amounts ranging between '5,000 and '30,000, depending upon the quantity and period of CDRs procured and after paying Narendra per CDR,” Mr Yadav added.

The Delhi police said at the instance of Rathore, Aditya Sharma, an accused in snooping case of BJP leader Arun Jaitley, was also apprehended from Uttam Nagar in Delhi. After being released on bail, Sharma he had changed his name Aditya from Arpit. He was also obtaining the CDRs for various clients with the help of Rathore. He use to sell these CDRs to his clients for '1 lakh. The police said the case is under investigation.

“We are investigating how many CDRs these detective agencies have obtained. We will ask senior officials of BLS Management Solution to join the probe,” he said.

The police is going through details of every mobile number that was snooped upon by these detective agencies. “Till now, we have not found details of any politician, bureaucrats or VIPs in our investigation,” said a senior police officer.