UP: ED Officer, Under CBI Scanner In Graft Case, Found Dead On Railway Tracks In Ghaziabad

The ED officer Alok Kumar Pankaj, whose body was discovered on railway tracks, had been questioned by the CBI in a bribery case.

Ghaziabad News: The body of an Enforcement Directorate (ED) officer, who was recently questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a bribery case, was found on the railway tracks at Gaushala Phatak in Ghaziabad on Sunday. The identity of the body was confirmed by the Government Railway Police (GRP).

The officer was identified as Alok Kumar Pankaj, as reported by The Print. He was with the investigation unit 1 of the ED headquarters.  The police scanned the CCTV footage after the body was discovered. The police suspected that Pankaj died by suicide after jumping between two coaches of a slow-moving goods train.

On Wednesday, police said that the officer's son filed a missing person complaint at the Nandgram police station on August 18, as per a Times Of India report. The son said that the officer's mobile phone was also switched off. The search operation was called off after a body was found on the railway track. The family of the officer identified him on August 20.

This comes days after the CBI Anti-Corruption Branch in Mumbai registered an FIR against an ED team for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 20 lakh from a local jewellery businessman. The FIR was filed on August 7, in which Pankaj was not named as an accused. However, his name was mentioned as part of the ED team, and he was questioned about his role, CBI sources told The Print.

Following the FIR file by the CBI, the ED sprung into action and took cognisance in the matter. The probe agency lodged an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against its assistant director, Sandeep Singh, whom the CBI named as the accused in the case.

GRP’s Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Sudesh Kumar Gupta confirmed to ThePrint that the GRP police station received information about a body on the tracks around 2.30 pm on Sunday. After receiving the information, a police team recovered the body. DSP Gupta also said that after searching the body, the police found a driving license and a handwritten note having Pankaj’s address in Ghaziabad’s Raj Nagar Extension from the pocket.

The GRP, however, was only able to find that Pankaj was an ED officer on Wednesday when his friend revealed this information to them. Speaking to The Print, DSP Gupta said, “The postmortem was on Monday, but we got to know he was an ED officer only when his son told me to talk to Pankaj’s friend, who said Pankaj was first working with the Income Tax Department and was later sent on deputation to the ED.”

A senior police officer with the GRP told The Print that on scanning the CCTV footage from the place where the ED officer took his life, it seemed that he jumped in between coaches while the train was moving. “It looks like a suicide based on evidence as of now. We are in touch with the family to find out possible reasons that drove him to suicide as part of inquiry proceedings,” the senior officer said.

The CBI FIR recorded that Mumbai-based businessman Vipul Thakkar filed a complaint claiming that Sandeep Singh and Pankaj sought bribes to not arrest his son, Nihar Thakkar, in an ongoing ED case.

According to The Print, the complaint named both, but the CBI named only Sandeep Singh as an accused in the FIR registered under Section 61(2)(a) of the Bhartiya Nyay Snahita (BNS). It deals with offenses linked to criminal conspiracy, and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act pertains to public servants who receive bribes.

While the CBI questioned Pankaj, it is unclear if the ED also started a probe against Pankaj under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.