Corruption case: Setback for Arvind Kejriwal as court sends his principal secretary Rajendra Kumar to 5-day police custody

New Delhi: It's a major setback for Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal as his key aide and Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar has been remanded to 5-day police custody.

Hearing the matter, a CBI court remanded all the five accused including the Delhi Principal Secretary to 5-day police custody in a corruption case.

During the hearing, the prosecutor while seeking custody said, "There are some evidence still surfacing which may lead to cheating and forgery charges."

Also, Rajendra Kumar's lawyer said to court that CBI could not prove wrongful gains even in seven months of its investigation.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar was among five persons arrested by CBI on Monday in a graft case.

The arrested sparked a vicious attack by AAP on the Centre, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking revenge for Delhi poll loss.

As the arrests over allegedly showing undue favours to a private company in award of government contracts worth over Rs 50 crore triggered a full-blown confrontation between the Centre and the AAP, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said never has any central government "stooped to such low level".

Kumar, a 1989 IAS officer of UT cadre, was called along with Tarun Sharma, a Deputy Secretary in Kejriwal's office, besides three other private persons for questioning at the CBI headquarters on Monday morning.

After being questioned for half a day, the CBI decided to place the two officers under arrest along with a close aide of Kumar, Ashok Kumar and owners of a private firm Sandeep Kumar and Dinesh Gupta.

The CBI had registered a case against Kumar and others in December last year alleging that the officer had abused his official position by "favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders of Delhi government departments".

The charges pressed by the CBI are under sections 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy), and 13(2), 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act (Criminal conspiracy, criminal misconduct etc) for allegedly favouring a private company --Endeavour Systems Pvt. Ltd.-- in bagging five contracts.

The CBI alleged that the accused persons had entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused a loss of Rs 12 crore to the Delhi Government in award of contracts between 2007 and 2015, and claimed that the officials had taken "undue benefit" of over Rs three crore while awarding the contract.