The officer is also charged with illegal detention and planting evidence.

According to the ACB, the accused, ACP Chandra Hans, was booked on the basis of a sting operation done by the victim’s brother. The operation purportedly showed the officer had harassed the Seelampur jeweller and taken bribe from his family.

ACP Hans, posted with ACB from December 2004 to June 2007, is presently absconding. The ACB has picked up Head Constable Vinod and Constable Kishan Kumar, who were part of Hans’s team. “We are conducting raids at ACP Hans’s house and looking for others, too,” Additional CP (ACB) N Dilip Singh said.

The case dates back to December 2008 — the Special Staff of Northwest district police were working on the robbery of 247 kilograms of silver when the consignment was on its way to the IGI Airport. The consignment from Chandni Chowk was for Chennai.

The police reportedly picked up one Afzal Khan, 28, a Seelampur-based jeweller, and claimed he had helped dispose of the stolen silver. According to the complaint lodged with the ACB this month, Khan’s family claimed they paid Rs 5.57 lakh bribe in three different installments to the officer and his team to get Khan off the hook.

According to Khan’s brother Shakhawat, a team of six special staff officers, led by ACP Hans, picked up Afzal during a raid at his shop on January 29 — the police team also took Rs 2.87 lakh from the shop’s locker, Shakhawat claimed. Around midnight, he claims, the police team rang him up and sought a bribe of Rs 2 lakh. “They said Afzal would be killed unless I paid up the amount before dawn,” Shakhawat told Newsline.

Shakhawat claims that he arranged the money from relatives and went to Rohini Sector-17 police station around 2 am on January 30. Shakhawat said he met Head Constable JP (the police official’s initials; Khan does not know the full name) and was assured that his brother would be freed by 10 am after he paid a further Rs 70,000 on demand from the ACP’s team. Shakhawat said he got a call from the head constable on January 31: “I could hear my brother screaming in the background. Then he was made to talk — he told me that they would kill him unless I paid a further Rs 2 lakh.”

According to Shakhawat, he approached a lawyer, who asked him to take the complaint to the Anti-Corruption Branch. On February 6, Shakhawat carried out a sting using equipment given to him by the ACB and recorded conversations with Constable Trilok, who purportedly sought additional money for his team.

On February 13, Khan met ACP Chandra Hans at 7.45 pm at his office. As per complaints, the taped conversation got the ACP on record revealing that he spent part of Rs 5.57 lakh taken from Khan’s family to buy 14.5 kg silver — to show it as part of the stolen item recovered from Khan’s shop.

The ACB has also booked Hans for keeping Afzal Khan in illegal detention from January 29 to February 3 — he was presented in court only on February 4. Khan is lodged in Tihar Jail under judicial custody.

SHO, suspended cop held in graft case
The ACB on Friday arrested a station house officer (SHO) and a suspended sub-inspector in an alleged bribery case.

Surya Prakash Rawat, SHO of Bhajanpura police station, was arrested for allegedly seeking Rs 12,000 per month from a restaurant owner following a month-long sting operation, a senior officer said. Suspended Sub-Inspector Ram Kumar Tyagi was also held in connection with the bribe demand from restaurateur Deepak Aggarwal. “There were 12 cabins in the restaurant and the SHO wanted Rs 1,000 for each room,” Additional CP (ACB) N Dilip Kumar said.