Natwar Rateria, assistant PS to former Union Minister Dilip Singh Judeo, has told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that he along with Judeo had met an official of a mining company named Rahul Sarogi in the first week of November at New Delhi’s Taj Mahal Hotel. Rateria has also told the CBI that Rahul Sarogi has left the country. Sources in the agency say that they have not been able to trace Sarogi nor the company he represents.
In fact, Rateria is the one who has given the CBI early leads in the Judeo bribery case, exposed by The Sunday Express. The man who does all the hard-selling and smooth-talking in the Judeo video was tracked down by the CBI in Chhattisgarh but questioned only on telephone. After the election, Rateria is expected to arrive in New Delhi and present himself for interrogation.
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Rateria has also similarly ‘‘cooperated’’ with other Government agencies like the Intelligence Bureau. CBI officials also conceded that they have also ‘‘received’’ copies of e-mails (probably two) and that these were not obtained by them as part of their investigations. The fact that the e-mail (in which Amit Jogi reportedly wrote about conducting a sting operation) was drafted in August and that the sting operation was conducted in November, investigators say, is one of the many ‘‘confusing’’ aspects of the case.
CBI officials say they will convert the Preliminary Enquiry (PE) Into a Regular Case (RC) after they question all the key persons involved. This includes Judeo, Rateria and the Jogis.
The agency will chart its future course of action after it receives the report from the forensic laboratory in Hyderabad where it has sent the tape it received from The Indian Express. The report is expected within a week. Several others, including the proprieters of Akash Channel and the staff of the hotel, will also be questioned. Some members of the hotel staff arrived at the CBI headquarters today for interrogation.
Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption.
Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More
