The Delhi court on Wednesday granted bail to CBI DSP Devender Kumar in the alleged bribery case against agency's Special Director Rakesh Asthana even as CBI Additional SP SS Gurm moved the Delhi High Court seeking to be heard in Asthana's petition to quash the FIR against him. Asthana's plea is slated to be heard on Thursday.

Special CBI Judge Santosh Snehi Mann granted relief to Kumar and asked him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and a surety of like amount.

The relief was granted to Kumar as the CBI did not oppose his bail application. In his bail application, Kumar had termed his custody "illegal" and prayed the court to set him free.

Kumar also assured the court that he was ready to abide by the conditions imposed by the court while granting him bail.

Kumar and Asthana have already challenged the legality of the FIR filed against them.

Besides Asthana and Kumar, two private persons — Manoj Prasad and Somesh Prasad — have also been named as accused in the case.

Kumar had claimed that he was falsely implicated in the case and that he was a victim of rivalry among the senior officers of the CBI.

He had said he was investigating a case against meat exporter Moin Qureshi, in which the complainant in the present case —Sathish Babu Sana — was a suspect and the names of some past and present senior CBI officers had surfaced.

The FIR was lodged on the basis of a written complaint from Sana on October 15, wherein it was alleged that Kumar, being the IO in the case against Qureshi, was repeatedly calling the complainant to the CBI office to harass him and compel him to pay a bribe of Rs 5 crore for getting a clean chit in the case.

Meanwhile, CBI Additional SP S S Gurm told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday that there was "reasonable" apprehension that the agency would not effectively contest the petition filed by Special Director Rakesh Asthana seeking the quashing of an FIR against him in a bribery case.

Gurm has also dragged the name of RAW Special Director Samant Goel in the bribery case against Asthana.

Gurm, who was transferred from Delhi to Jabalpur, has sought to be made a party in the petition filed by Asthana.