| HC directive in alleged hushing up of RDA scam by SVO | | SVO had recommended regular departmental action against 'delinquent' IAS officer, 2 XEns, JE | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 16: A high court division bench of Chief Justice N Paul Vasanthakumar and Justice Bansi Lal Bhat today directed the AAG, appearing for state vigilance organisation to produce the record of preliminary inquiry No 13/2009, whereby it had recommended regular departmental action against delinquent IAS officer Mohammad Javed Khan, then chief executive officer of Rajouri Development Authority (RDA), Khushal Chand, then executive engineer, Devi Dass Heer, then executive engineer, and Gurcharan Singh, junior engineer of RDA.
The bench also directed that the record so produced be shown to the petitioner's counsel before the next date of hearing, i e March 2, 2016.
The petitioner's counsel submitted that he had already perused the record of verification No 31/2009 pertaining to RDA scam but SVO had not shown him the record pertaining to verification No 13/2009 which was closed by it on July 3, 2015 by recommending departmental action against the delinquent public servants.
It was submitted that like verification No 31/2009, SVO also closed verification No 13/2009 arbitrarily by recommending regular departmental action when the case was fit for registration of FIR under Section 5(2) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 2006 against the public servants. He read out a copy of the SVO's communication No VO-Veri-PR-13/2009-9835-36 dated July 3, 2015, wherein it had clearly mentioned that service tax which was due to the government exchequer as calculated by a VOJ finance expert comes to the tune of Rs 1,93,915 and the public servants, which remained associated with the execution of various civil nature development works included Mohammad Javed Khan, Khushal Chand, Devi Dass Heer and Gurcharan Singh.
Instead of registering an FIR in the matter, SVO, just to shield the high profile officers, changed the complexion of the case and illegally observed that no criminal misconduct on the part of the public servants surfaced when it was a clear cut loss to the state exchequer. This was not a case of irregularities as concluded by SVO and the influential public servants were let off from the dragnet of law and an escape route was devised by SVO by recommending regular departmental action.
Javed Khan's counsel submitted that SVO was justified in recommending departmental action in both the verifications as criminality was not detected by it during verification.
After hearing both the sides, the bench directed the AAG to produce the record of preliminary inquiry No 13/2009, whereby SVO had recommended regular departmental action against the delinquent public servants. The court also directed him that the record so produced be shown to the petitioner's counsel before the March 2, 2016, the next date of hearing. |
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