New Delhi: In a striking case of one central investigative agency arresting officers of another, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested two Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials — an Enforcement Officer and a Head Constable — in an alleged Rs 5 lakh bribery case in Lucknow. Both have been charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the CBI is expected to seek their remand for custodial interrogation.
The accused have been identified as Deepak Kumar, Enforcement Officer, and Manoj Dwivedi, Head Constable, both posted at the ED's Lucknow Zone office. According to the CBI, the case was registered on Friday, October 23, following a complaint alleging that Dwivedi had demanded a bribe from the complainant's father in connection with an ED case in which he had received two summonses from the ED's Lucknow Zone in August and September 2026.
Acting on the complaint, the CBI laid a trap on October 23. During the operation, Dwivedi was allegedly caught red-handed while demanding and accepting Rs 5 lakh on behalf of the Enforcement Officer for extending a favour to the complainant's father in the ED proceedings. Both officials were subsequently arrested.
"The CBI registered the case on Friday against the head-constable of the Enforcement Directorate, Lucknow, and unknown officials of the ED, Lucknow, based on a complaint," the CBI said in a statement. "It was alleged that the accused head constable demanded a bribe from the father of the complainant for helping him in the ED case in which he received two summons in the month of August and September 2026 from the ED Lucknow Zone," the statement added.
A notable detail of the case is that Dwivedi was deployed in the ED on deputation from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and is not an ED cadre officer. The CBI said the trap was executed after the complaint was verified — the agency's standard procedure in corruption cases involving public servants, where it lays a trap and arrests the accused if it finds them accepting the bribe.
Officials said the arrests reflect the CBI's continuing efforts to curb corruption within investigative agencies and promote accountability among public servants. The agency said its investigation is ongoing to establish the full extent of the alleged misconduct and determine whether other officials were involved, keeping open the possibility that the case could widen beyond the two arrested men.
The case has drawn attention because of its unusual optics: the ED, India's financial crimes agency that probes money laundering and foreign exchange violations, has been at the centre of some of the country's most high-profile investigations in recent years. That its own officers now stand accused of demanding a bribe in connection with an ED case has fuelled criticism from opposition voices and raised uncomfortable questions about internal oversight within the agency.
The CBI, as the country's premier anti-corruption agency, routinely investigates bribery complaints against public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Its trap-and-arrest method — registering a case on a verified complaint, marking currency, and catching the accused in the act of accepting the bribe — is designed to produce evidence that stands up in court.
In this case, the agency moved with unusual speed, registering the case and laying the trap on the same day the complaint was received.
The Enforcement Directorate has not yet issued a public statement on the arrests. Legal experts note that the case will now follow the standard course: the CBI will seek custodial remand to interrogate the accused and trace any wider network, file a chargesheet, and the trial will proceed in a special CBI court. If convicted under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the accused face imprisonment and dismissal from service.
Separately, the CBI on Friday also announced the arrest of Muhammed Fasal K, a key accused in an international cyber fraud and ATM card smuggling syndicate, from his residence in Thamarassery, Kozhikode. That case relates to a Rs 1.04 crore cyber fraud reported in July 2024, in which a Thrissur-based complainant was allegedly duped by fraudsters posing as FedEx officials and cybercrime police.
The investigation uncovered an international network that allegedly purchased debit and ATM cards from young people and students for Rs 3,000 to Rs 7,000 each and smuggled them to Dubai, where foreign associates used them to withdraw proceeds of cyber fraud. The accused allegedly invested the money in real estate across India and smuggled gold in Kerala.
The CBI has urged citizens who encounter corruption or face demands for bribes from public servants to report such incidents, and said further investigation into the alleged Rs 5 lakh bribery case involving Deepak Kumar and Dwivedi is underway.
The details that have emerged paint a picture of how the alleged demand unfolded. The complainant's father had received two summonses from the ED's Lucknow Zone, one in August and another in September 2026, in connection with an Enforcement Directorate case. It was in the shadow of these summonses, the CBI's complaint alleges, that Dwivedi demanded illegal gratification in exchange for assisting him in the ongoing ED proceedings.
The CBI registered its case on the basis of this complaint and, on the same day, laid the trap that led to the arrests — a timeline that suggests the agency moved quickly once the complaint was verified.
The Prevention of Corruption Act under which both men have been charged is the principal statute governing bribery and graft by public servants in India. Investigations under the Act are typically handled by the CBI's Anti-Corruption Branch, and conviction can lead to rigorous imprisonment, fines and the loss of service benefits.
For the accused, the immediate legal consequence will be suspension from service pending the outcome of the investigation, followed by departmental proceedings that run parallel to the criminal trial.
The case also throws light on the practice of deputing officers from paramilitary and police forces to specialised agencies. Dwivedi, a head constable on deputation from the CRPF, was serving in the ED's Lucknow office — a posting that gave him proximity to sensitive financial crime investigations without making him a cadre officer of the agency.
Such deputations are common across India's investigative landscape, filling manpower gaps in agencies like the ED, the NIA and the CBI itself. Critics have long argued that the system makes accountability harder to pin down; defenders say it is indispensable given the shortage of specialised investigators.
For the Enforcement Directorate, the arrests are an embarrassment that arrives at a delicate moment. The agency has been in the spotlight for years as the instrument of some of India's most aggressive financial crime probes, and its officers wield enormous power over individuals and businesses under investigation — power that, the CBI's action suggests, can be misused.
The ED's silence so far on the arrests has been noted, and the coming days will show whether the agency orders its own internal inquiry into how the alleged demand went undetected.
Officials familiar with the CBI's working say the speed of Friday's operation — complaint registered, trap laid and arrests made within a single day — reflects a tightening of the agency's anti-corruption playbook. The trap method requires careful groundwork: the complaint must first be discreetly verified, the bribe amount and terms established, and the marked currency handed over under surveillance.
That all of this was accomplished in hours suggests the complainant's cooperation was complete and the evidence unambiguous.
The broader message the CBI is sending is unmistakable. By arresting officers of a fellow investigative agency, it has signalled that no institution is beyond its anti-corruption remit. As the investigation continues and the CBI seeks custodial remand for interrogation, the question of whether other officials were involved — a possibility the agency has explicitly kept open — will determine how far the fallout from a Rs 5 lakh demand reaches.
(Reporting based on Hindustan Times and NDTV.)