Abhishek Verma always prided himself on his connections in the police and the CBI. But on Friday, June 23, his antennae failed to receive any signal that trouble was afoot. So when a CBI team drove into 8, Empire Estate, Verma’s residence off the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road outside Delhi, he was caught off guard. It was still the wee hours of the morning and Verma was woken up as CBI officials searched his residence, seized financial statements, telephone records, documents, computers and laptops. Similar raids were conducted simultaneously at his office in Gurgaon and the office of Sushil Bageriya, Verma’s chartered accountant, at Manish Plaza on Ansari Road in Delhi’s Daryaganj.
For the CBI, which was handed over the case a year after the war room leak was first detected, it has been a frustrating experience. Many of the trails had already gone cold. But the June 23 raid and the investigations that preceded it had helped the agency achieve one significant breakthrough. Senior officials in the CBI told...
