He loved playing golf and bragged about his opulent lifestyle on Facebook. And when he was arrested on October 16 — causing the rot in the CBI to burst into the open — he bragged about his high connections in Delhi’s corridors of power.
Manoj Prasad, son of a retired RAW joint secretary, and his brother Somesh — investment bankers in Dubai — are middlemen who collected bribes for CBI special director Rakesh Asthana, the FIR says.
Somesh is at large in Dubai but Manoj was held at Delhi airport on Saptami morning and immediately began name-dropping, a CBI officer told the Supreme Court on Monday.
“During the first few hours of his arrival at the (agency) headquarters, Manoj was garrulous and arrogant…. He tried his best to ward off the investigation by dropping names of ‘high and mighty’ and mentioning his ‘top contacts’ to create fear in our mind,” says the petition moved by CBI deputy inspector-general Manish Kumar Sinha.
The next morning, he says, CBI officer A.K. Bassi, the lead investigator in the Asthana case, received calls from police officers who said the cabinet secretariat had enquired about Manoj’s arrest.
A RAW officer said: “The two brothers are close to several IAS and IPS officers who have made real estate investments in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. According to the grapevine, the brothers have helped many bureaucrats buy properties in West Asia and handle their offshore investments.”
A CBI officer said the brothers were “well-connected and high-flying businessmen known for their flamboyant lifestyles”.
“Manoj’s Facebook profile said he was fond of luxury and opulence and that playing golf was his passion,” he said.
He claimed Manoj had boasted that he flew first class between Dubai, Delhi, London and Singapore and put up photos on his Facebook page to prove that, but added that the account was deleted mysteriously soon after his arrest,
According to Sinha, Manoj had claimed during interrogation that his father Dineshwar Prasad had “close acquaintance” with national security adviser Ajit Doval.
“This was one of the first things Manoj claimed on being brought to CBI HQ and expressed complete surprise and anger as to how CBI could pick him up despite his close links with the NSA Shri Doval,” Sinha has said in his petition.
“He started bragging and claimed that his brother Somesh is very close to an officer at Dubai (name withheld) and to Samant Goel, presently special secretary, RAW, and (that) he can get us ‘finished off’/ ‘kicked out’.”
According to Sinha, Manoj claimed that Somesh and Goel had recently helped Doval “on an important personal matter”.
Other CBI sources claimed to have intercepts that suggested that as soon as Manoj was arrested, Somesh had called Goel who then called Asthana.
Goel has been named in the agency’s FIR in the bribery case against Asthana but not as an accused. The RAW officer allegedly tried to dilute the money-laundering case against meat exporter Moin Qureshi with help from Manoj, who is accused of arranging the purported bribe for Asthana for the purpose.
Asthana and Goel, both 1984-batch IPS officers, are believed to be close friends. While Asthana belongs to the Gujarat cadre, Goel is from the Punjab cadre. Both RAW and the CBI directly report to the Prime Minister’s Office.
“En route my Matrabhumiii (India),” was Manoj’s last post on his Facebook timeline, at 3.11am on October 16 from the Emirates first-class lounge in Dubai airport, shortly before boarding his flight to Delhi, CBI sources said.
