Day after CBI raid, office of company under the scanner remains deserted

The company’s corporate office in Sector 63 in Noida, where the two directors, Sandeep Kumar and Dinesh Gupta, have their offices, was nearly empty and the full staff strength was no longer reporting to work, guards at the office told The Indian Express.

The CBI has invoked charges of criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code against Sandeep Kumar and Gupta. It is alleged that Rajendra Kumar favoured Endeavour in the award of at least five contracts by doing away with the tendering process.

The office in Noida, however, did not have any official signboard of the company and instead had two boards of Rani Promoter Private Limited and Shantiniketan Buildtech Private Limited.

Though a couple of employees shuffled in and out of the office, calls on the landline phone went unanswered.

Asked if the office had shut down, the guard said, “Jab koi aa nahi rahe hain, shutdown hi samajhiye. (No one has been coming to work, so you can assume it’s a shutdown)”

He added that the directors, till a couple of days ago, had worked out of this office.

Even the company’s registered office in North West Delhi’s Shastri Nagar area wore a deserted look, with no one other than a couple of daily wage labourers around.

Although these workers remained tight-lipped about the whereabouts of the owner and other employees, a banner with the company’s name on the building’s main gate announced that Laxmi Store in Shastri Nagar’s B block market area could be contacted for business purposes.

Locals maintained that Gupta’s father has been running a stationery shop, Laxmi Store, in the locality for at least 40 years.

While Gupta’s father declined to comment, an employee of the store, Bhavani Dutt, said, “He (Gupta) is with the CBI. There is complete cooperation from our side. There are other owners and shareholders in the company too. The investigation is being carried out. Yesterday, the CBI did not conduct a raid… they were just looking for some documents.”

In the market near these two buildings, conversations remained centred on the raid and even debates on Kejriwal’s remarks about the Prime Minister.

“This case has become big only because of Kejriwal-Modi politics,” said a property dealer whose office is located a few metres away from the Endeavour’s office.