Visakhapatnam: During the last 24 hours, a CBI team from Delhi arrested an executive director of GAIL (India) Ltd and four others in an alleged Rs 50 lakh bribery case.
Davinder Singh, chief general manager and project in charge of GAIL's Visakhapatnam branch, and Surender Kumar, director of Vadodara-based Advance Infrastructures, were arrested.
According to sources close to the investigative agencies, Davinder Singh was apprehended in Visakhapatnam on Monday evening with the help of the local CBI and handed over to the Delhi team on Tuesday following questioning.
Murali Rambha, the SP of the CBI's Visakhapatnam branch, refused to reveal any specifics but stated that the investigation was ongoing. A bribe is alleged to have been paid in exchange for favouring the company in two GAIL pipeline projects: Srikakulam to Angul and Vijaypur to Auraiya.
Searches are being conducted in Delhi, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and Visakhapatnam. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the groundwork for the 745-kilometre pipeline from Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh to Angul in Odisha on November 12 last year in Visakhapatnam. The pipeline would set you back Rs 2,658 crore. The pipeline, as part of the Natural Gas Grid, would provide critical infrastructure for supplying natural gas to home households, industries, commercial entities, and automobile sectors in several regions of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The overall length will be 620 km in Odisha and 125 km in Andhra Pradesh.
