New Delhi, Feb. 21: Former CBI director Amar Pratap Singh, against whom the agency has registered a corruption case, today claimed his BlackBerry chats with a co-accused that the sleuths had cited were "mostly personal" and "innocuous".
Enforcement Directorate head Karnal Singh had sent records of chat messages between Singh and meat exporter Moin Qureshi to the CBI, saying those suggested the duo had colluded to secure favours for businessmen from public servants.
Disclosing this yesterday, CBI spokesperson R.K. Gaur had said the complaint had prompted the agency to register an FIR - the first against a former chief - and search his home.
Singh, a 1974-batch IPS officer who had headed the agency from November 2010 till November 2012, said he would comment only after consulting his lawyer. But he insisted that the phone messages had been in the public domain "for over three years".
"The Enforcement Director did not add anything further. None of the purported messages sent through BlackBerry Messenger pertain to the CBI investigations. They are mostly personal and innocuous in nature, as between friends," Singh said.
"A probe is on and A.P. Singh is likely to be arrested," a senior CBI official said.
During Singh's tenure, the CBI had filed chargesheets in high-profile cases such as the 2G scam and the "fake encounter" killings of gangsters Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsi Prajapati in Gujarat.
The Sohrabuddin-Prajapati chargesheet had named current BJP president Amit Shah, who was Gujarat home minister when the deaths took place in 2005-06. Shah had been arrested in the case before Singh's tenure as CBI head and later granted bail.
A court discharged Shah in December 2014, seven months after the Narendra Modi government came to power, saying the agency had not presented enough evidence to merit a trial. The CBI did not appeal.
"Shah had been accused of ordering police to kill Sohrabuddin and his wife Kausarbi, and later Prajapati, a key witness," a senior CBI official said.
Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu today said a thorough probe was needed into the allegations against Singh.
"It's a real shame for all of us that the director of a premier investigative agency has now been charged," Naidu told reporters.
Singh, Qureshi, the latter's employee Aditya Sharma and the owner of the Trimax group of companies, Pradeep Koneru, are co-accused in the case besides some unknown people.
They have been booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act and charged with criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.
The agency had yesterday searched Singh's Defence Colony home and the premises of the other three in Delhi, Ghaziabad, Chennai and Hyderabad. The agency is probing Koneru also in connection with an assets case against YSR Congress leader Jaganmohan Reddy.
The Supreme Court recently asked the CBI to probe another former director, Singh's successor Ranjit Sinha, accused of favouring some 2G and coal allocation accused.
