New Delhi, June 1 (The Indian Express) : Sanjay Bhandari, the defence consultant whose premises were searched by the Income Tax Department between April 27 and April 30 this year, has admitted that the email trail recovered from his computer was indeed that of messages exchanged between him, Robert Vadra and Vadra’s assistant Manoj Arora.

Officials in the Department have confirmed to The Indian Express that just before the search operation was over, Bhandari was confronted with the batch of emails, including one dated April 4, 2010 — the only one sent from Vadra’s own email ID and signed off by him — and he acknowledged the exchanges on the subject of finalising interiors for an apartment in London.

An attachment to one of the mails shows that while the cost of refurbishing was earlier estimated by Sumit Chadda, a relative of Bhandari, to be 28,000 pounds, additional items were added to the worklist and the estimate went up to 35,000 pounds.