Land dispute nailed Verma?

NEW DELHI: Dispute over a land bank of over 100 hectares bought by controversial businessman Abhishek Verma and his associates along the Yamuna Expressway may have been a trigger, leading US attorney C Edmonds Allen bringing Verma’s deals to the notice of Indian investigators. According to sources, the land bank was bought by Verma, Allen and other associates a few years ago.
Verma’s wife Ancia Neascu, Allen and others were involved in the deal.Later, differences arose among the partners about what to do with the land, the price of which had shot up after the expressway development took off.
While Verma wanted to develop a township there, Allen and others probably wanted to dispose of the land. The CBI was looking at several such deals as also companies of Verma and his wife Neascu, who have been booked for receiving $530,000 from Rheinmetall Air Defence (RAD) AG to get it removed from the ministry of defence blacklist.
A city court on Saturday remanded both Verma and his newly wed Romanian wife to seven days CBI custody, a day after both were arrested.
In the latest CBI case against him, Verma has been accused of receiving payments from RAD for using his influence to stall the blacklisting proceedings initiated by the government against it after the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) scam surfaced.
RAD was among the six defence firms that were suspected of bribing former OFB chairman Sudipto Ghosh, and are now blacklisted.
The CBI produced the couple before the special CBI court and sought their custody for 12 days saying that the investigation in the case is going on and they need to unearth the entire conspiracy.
In its remand application, the CBI said they need custody of the accused to confront them with the emails and the documents seized during the investigation.
The court directed the CBI to get the accused medically examined in a government hospital on Saturday and after every 48 hours while they are in the agency’s custody. It also allowed Verma’s counsel to meet them everyday for 30 minutes in the CBI custody.
Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, appearing for the couple, opposed the CBI’s remand application, saying that the agency had searched their premises on June 7 and his clients were in the CBI’s office since Friday morning.
The counsel said that the freedom of his clients has been restrained by the CBI for the last two days and said that even the case diary produced before the court is not as contemplated under the Criminal Procedure Code.
"They want to have my remand for 12 days only to know the passwords of the email ids. The CBI should be more responsible in seeking remand," the lawyer argued, accusing the agency of illegally seizing the passport of Ancia Neascu. He said she wants to meet the Romanian ambassador in the capital.
Opposing the remand application for Neascu, Aggarwal argued that her arrest was illegal as she was taken into custody by a male officer, that too after sunset, at 7.15pm on Friday. The lawyer alleged his clients were subjected to "third degree torture" by the agency "to extract their confession and disclose something which they do not know".
"Both my clients are ready to give statement that whatever they knew about this FIR, they have already told the police. Now nothing remains which require their custody," he said.