CBI injured co-accused, abused me: Rajendra Kumar

New Delhi: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s former principal secretary Rajendra Kumar, who has been chargesheeted by the CBI in a corruption case, has charged the investigating agency of causing severe injuries to his co-accused and other people who have not been chargesheeted by the probe agency so far. Mr Kumar, however, said that though the CBI had abused, threatened and used the choicest abuses against him, he was not beaten up by the agency. In an interview to a TV channel, Mr Kumar said if a judicial commission was ordered into the matter, then each of those beaten up by the probe agency would speak up.

Asked why the co-accused and others had not revealed their order before the court, Mr Kumar said: “One of them even stated in the court, and the judge advised him to go to the high court. He even went to the high court. His submissions in the HC petition are part of the records. The point is isn’t it the responsibility of the government to look at these things? Shouldn’t the state look into it as someone had the courage to raise such issues?”

On being questioned about the CBI’s claims that it had video recordings and e-mails as evidence against him, Mr Kumar said that the agency was talking only about selective things “It is a government house. They took videos of costly vehicles outside and attributed it to me. I will not go into the merits of the case but I have awarded contracts worth thousands of crores. It is common sense —  I could have earned money in a simpler way. In the education department, we got software that costs crores, but we got it developed for a pittance. That software is running even now.”

Mr Kumar said he was being targeted as part of a political vendetta against him and some people wanted him to take a particular line, which he had refused to follow. “That is the reason for such a severe thing. It is not only about CBI. I have three criminal cases against me, a person who has got the highest awards in the country has now got three cases. ”

The senior bureaucrat said that nothing can deter him from doing public service. He said: “Long series of actions — showcause notice, three criminal cases, 7-8 income-tax notices, whatever methods are available to the government, have been used against me. That is immaterial. I will live, I will fight, I will survive. I have taken an oath to do public service, to myself, and I will continue to do so.”

Reacting to the reports on whether he was going to join politics in the near future, Mr Kumar said this was one of the options and he was open to it as well. To a specific query on whether he would join AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, he said: “It could be Congress, it could be the BJP or the Aam Aadmi Party.”