The arrested accused will be produced before the designated court in Delhi on Friday
The CBI has arrested the director of ABCI Infrastructure Ltd, Pawan Baid, who allegedly paid a bribe of Rs 1 crore to the chief administrative officer of Northeast Frontier Railways for getting contracts and had been on run since January 17, officials said on Friday.
The bribe was allegedly paid to a relative of CAO/Construction-II Northeast Frontier Railways Mahender Singh Chauhan who was arrested on January 17, they said.
"The accused (Baid) was absconding since January 17, 2021 and was not joining the investigation. Subsequently, a Non-Bailable Warrant was issued on January 23, 2021 against the said accused by the Special Judge CBI Cases, New Delhi," CBI spokesperson RC Joshi said.
"Various places of hiding of accused situated in Guwahati, Araria (Bihar), Siliguri, New Delhi, etc. were identified, searched and he was apprehended from Delhi," he said.
The arrested accused will be produced before the designated court in Delhi on Friday, he said.
Chauhan, a 1985-batch officer of Indian Railways Service of Engineer, was arrested from Maligaon, Guwahati, while two others -- Bhupendra Rawat, an employee of ABCI Infrastructures Pvt Ltd and one Indra Singh -- were apprehended from Uttarakhand's Dehradun where the alleged bribe was being exchanged on his instructions on January 17, the officials said.
Besides the arrested accused and the company, the CBI has also booked two railway officials -- Deputy Chief Engineer Hem Chand Borah and Assistant Executive Engineer Laxmi Kant Verma.
It is alleged that 58-year-old Chauhan had demanded the bribe to favour the accused company in awarding contracts for various projects in Northeast Frontier Railways, the officials said.
"The contractors were allegedly being facilitated in awarding the contracts, processing of subsequent bills, release of payments, etc. by the public functionaries in lieu of illegal gratification," Mr Joshi had said in a statement after the FIR was filed.
The CBI has alleged that the said director of the private company was in contact with the said CAO in various ongoing projects in the Northeast Frontier Region.
"It was also alleged that on his demand, the said director, through his employee, got delivered a bribe of Rs one crore to the relative (private person) of said CAO at his residence in Dehradun," the statement had said.