Important that CBI's integrity is restored: Arun Jaitley on Alok Verma's removal

Jaitley said the government has acted as per the directives of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

Reacting to Verma's leave, Jaitley said as he has been quoted by NDTV, "CBI director, special director will 'sit out' as interim measure while SIT will probe charges against them."

Alok Verma meanwhile moved the Supreme Court against his removal on Wednesday. 

Amid internal fight between Verma and CBI's special director Rakesh Asthana, the government has appointed M Nageshwar Rao as an interim chief of the probe agency, media reports said. 

Rakesh Astana, who moved the Delhi High court against the First Information Report (FIR) report lodged against him over the bribery case by his own organisation, bringing to fore an infighting within India's premier federal investigation agency, will not be arrested till Monday.

Asthana, who is engaged in a turf war with Verma, had sought a direction from the high court that no coercive action be taken against him in the case.

Rubbishing the Congress' charge of Asthana as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's blue-eyed boy, Jaitley said "during an investigation, red eyes or blue eyes do not matter". "It is the evidence that matters," he told the channel.

"The two senior-most officers being on leave is purely an interim measure and will return at the end of the impartial probe, subject to their innocence. One must remember that the country's premier investigating agency cannot lose its integrity."  

The CBI on Monday arrested its Deputy Superintendent of Police, Devender Kumar, in connection with a bribery case that laid bare the probe agency's internal conflict.

The CBI said Kumar was arrested on charges of falsification of records in an ongoing investigation and said “the role of other officers of SIT (special investigation team) CBI, then supervising the Moin Qureshi case” was also being probed, reported Hindustan Times.

After bribery charges were slapped against him, Asthana in a written statement to the government said a "false FIR (First Information Report)" has been lodged against him".

Asthana has been named by Satish Sana, a Hyderabad businessman, who was being investigated in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, arrested in a money laundering case, the report said.

Sana claimed he had to cough up a bribe of Rs. two crores to Rakesh Asthana over a period of over 10-months so that he is not named in the CBI case against Moin Qureshi.

However, Asthana rubbished the charges saying it was hurled against him owing to a conspiracy between the accuser and some CBI and Enforcement Directorate officers.