Prime Minister Narendra Modi summoned CBI director Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana to his office and asked them to end their public feuding on a day the agency arrested one of its senior officers as a fallout of the infighting.

“The Prime Minister summoned them on Monday afternoon and asked them to resolve their differences internally and not through the media,” a government source said. “He conveyed that their acts were giving the CBI a bad name.”

On Monday, the CBI arrested one of its deputy superintendents, Devender Kumar, on the charge of fabricating a witness statement to corroborate special director Asthana’s bribery allegations against Verma. A week earlier, a bribery case had been registered against Asthana at Verma’s behest.

On Sunday, agency sleuths had searched the offices of some of their own officers at the CBI headquarters, a move sources said was “unprecedented”.

“The offices of some officers belonging to the Asthana camp were searched as part of the probe in the bribery case against Asthana. The searches were conducted on the instructions of the CBI director,” an agency official said.

Earlier in the day, a team from the agency’s anti-corruption branch had been sent to Vadodara to probe the funding of the lavish wedding of Asthana’s daughter, held in a palace owned by Vadodara’s erstwhile royal family.

Sources said that considering the allegations and counter-allegations Verma and Asthana had made against each other, it had become untenable for either to remain in the CBI.

“The ugly turf war has left the government embarrassed. The Centre is miffed with Verma for registering an FIR against his deputy and leaking it to the media, and is weighing the option of transferring at least one of them, if not both, from the CBI,” an official of the department of personal and training, to which the CBI reports, said.

Asthana, a Gujarat-cadre officer who had overseen the initial probe into the Godhra train fire that led to the 2002 riots, is perceived to be close to Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

The Centre had in December 2016 controversially appointed the officer, then an additional director, as acting CBI chief, ignoring candidates short-listed for the director’s post.

On August 24, Asthana had complained to the cabinet secretary that a businessman had paid Verma Rs 2 crore to get relief in a case. On October 15, the CBI booked Asthana for allegedly taking a Rs 3-crore bribe to provide relief to the same businessman.

This businessman, sources said, is a meat exporter named Moin Qureshi who is being probed on the charge of having worked as a middleman who secured bribes for top CBI officers from rich people they were investigating.

Devender Kumar is accused of fabricating a statement in the name of Shatish Babu Sana, an alleged middleman and co-accused in the Qureshi case, saying a Telugu Desam Rajya Sabha member had met Verma to settle the investigation in Qureshi’s favour.

A CBI spokesperson said the purported statement by Sana was shown to have been recorded on September 26 this year in Delhi.

“During investigation, it was found that Sana was not in Delhi that day but was in Hyderabad. Sana joined the investigation in Delhi only on October 1,” the spokesperson said.

Sana, a Hyderabad-based businessman, has now become a complainant against Asthana and has been listed as a witness. Kumar was part of the special investigation team headed by Asthana.

“It was found that Devender Kumar fabricated this statement as an afterthought plan to corroborate the baseless allegations made by special director Rakesh Asthana against director CBI Alok Kumar Verma,” the spokesperson said.

“Looking into the seriousness of the matter, the role of other officers then supervising the Moin Qureshi case are being probed.’

The agency has booked Asthana on the charges of criminal conspiracy, corruption and criminal misconduct along with Kumar and two others: Dubai-based investment banker and alleged middleman Manoj Prasad and his brother Somesh Prasad. Manoj was arrested on October 16.

“We have records of WhatsApp conversations and phone log details that establish a link between the accused persons,” a CBI official said.

The FIR says the bribes were received in five instalments between December 2017 and October 2018.