Gutkha scam: CBI summons inspector, DSP for questioning

Mannar Mannan works in railway police while Sampath Kumar is attached to Thoothukudi district police.  

The CBI team from Delhi had conducted searches in the houses of both the police officials last week besides checking the homes of state health minister Vijaya Baskar, state police chief T K Rajendran and retired DGP S George, who is a former Chennai police commissioner. 

Following it, the investigators on Thursday had arrested five people, including three promoters of gutkha trading firm and two government officials. 

On Monday, a special court for CBI cases granted the probe agency custody of those arrested for four days. The accused have been identified as AV Madhava Rao, Srinivasa Rao and Uma Shankar Gupta promoters of Annamalai Industries along with Dr P Senthil Murugan of Food Safety and Drug Administration department of Tamil Nadu and N K Pandian, a superintendent of Central Excise department.

The case pertains to the illegal sale of gutkha — which was banned in Tamil Nadu in 2013 — and payment of bribe amounting to Rs 40 crore to government officials and ministers till 2016, the year income tax investigators stumbled up on a ledger which had details of bribes given to different people. 

On Friday, former city police commissioner and retired DGP S George, in a hurriedly arranged press meet, had blamed his subordinates for not informing him of the details of the gutkha scam on time.