Exposing a cash-for-grain racket, the CBI on Wednesday arrested Rajiv Kumar Mishra, Deputy General Manager (DGM) of Food Corporation of India (FCI), and rice mill-owner Ravinder Singh Khera. The agency also recovered ₹80 lakh — including ₹8 lakh from the house of Sudeep Singh, Executive Director, FCI — during searches carried out in different States.
The CBI sleuths arrested the duo when Misha, posted in Punjab, was allegedly accepting ₹50,000 from Khera, the owner of Guru Kripa Rice and Agro Industries. The agency had launched a secret operation, code named ‘Kanak’, six months ago to put under surveillance the entire syndicate of FCI officials, grain merchants and millers, including food grains distributors.
The CBI has booked 74 persons, including 37 FCI officials and 20 companies, in the FIR.
Mishra, caught red-handed by the CBI, was in fact said to have raised an alarm inside the FCI system about unfair rice procurement when he was posted at the headquarters. He had questioned how procurement in States like Haryana, Punjab and Telangana could be more than the States’ production, for which he was allegedly shifted out of Delhi, sources said.