NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge sheet in a city court here against two persons for entering into a criminal conspiracy to impersonate Union Minister of State for Home Manikrao H. Gavit and his personal secretary. Admitting the charge sheet, the court fixed February 1 as the next date of hearing.

In August last, a news channel had broadcast a taped conversation allegedly between Mr. Gavit and one Sunder Singh Bhati, who is lodged in Bulandshahr Jail. Mr. Gavit denied having had any such conversation, following which the CBI initiated preliminary enquiry into the matter.

The agency collected the alleged taped conversation (in the audio and video compact disc format), from the news channel and obtained the voice sample of Mr. Gavit, which were then sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory for matching. The forensic experts reportedly opined that the voice in the compact disc and that of Mr. Gavit were not the same.

On August 25 last, the northeast Delhi police arrested Krishan Kumar with four mobile phones and three SIM cards, two of which — according to the news channel's report — had apparently been used to call up Bhati. Subsequently, the CBI registered a regular case in the matter and took Krishan into custody. During interrogation, he allegedly confessed to having impersonated Mr. Gavit and some bureaucrats to demand favours from various people.

He purportedly revealed that posing as Mr. Gavit he had called up Bhati to seek help in recovering Rs. 10 lakhs from two residents of Baghpat as a commission for striking a land deal. At his instance, his accomplice Vinod had allegedly impersonated as personal assistant to Mr. Gavit.

Investigations revealed that a number of calls had been made between the mobile phones of Krishan and Bhati. During questioning inside the jail premises, Bhati allegedly confirmed that Krishan had approached him for the recovery of the money.

Further, Krishan allegedly disclosed that posing as Mr. Gavit he had on several occasions contacted the chairman of an engineering college asking him to enrol his candidates. This way he managed to get about three of his candidates enrolled in the college, for which he charged Rs. 2 lakhs per head.

On one occasion, he allegedly impersonated an Indian Administrative Service official to seek favours from an electronic firm. Posing as personal assistant to Mr. Gavit, he had allegedly offered jobs of constables to several people and cheated them of several lakhs.

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