Senior IPS officer Sandeep Goel has been removed from the post of director general of police (prisons) days after conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar alleged his role in preferential treatment to AAP minister Satyender Jain inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
Goel has been transferred and asked to report to the Delhi Police headquarters on Friday.
Sanjay Beniwal, Goel’s batch mate of the 1989 AGMUT cadre, has been appointed as the new director general of Tihar.
In a complaint letter to Delhi lieutenant governor VX Saxena, extortionist Sukesh, who is also lodged in the Tihar jail, recently claimed that he has paid ₹10 crores to Jain and ₹12.50 crores to Goel as “protection money”.
He had also alleged that he knew the AAP leader since 2015 and paid ₹50 crores to the Arvind Kejriwal-led party on the promise of an important party position in southern India.
Sukesh, who extorted crores from several high-profile business and political personalities, had also alleged that minister Jain, who is accused in a money laundering case, visited him several times in the Tihar jail after his arrest in the 2017 AIDMK symbol case. At that time, Jain was serving as minister of prisons.
During his visits, Sukesh alleged, Jain asked him “if I had disclosed anything related to my contribution to AAP to the investigating agency which arrested me”.
“Thereafter in 2019 again, I was visited by Jain and his secretary and his close friend Sushil in Jail, and asking me to pay ₹2 crores every month to him as protection money to live safely in jail, and to get even basic facilities provided. Also, he asked me to pay ₹1.50 crore to DG prison Sandeep Goel,” he alleged.
Jain was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in May this year in connection with a money laundering probe involving hawala deals. The agency has attached his properties worth crores of rupees.