Early Times Report
jammu, Aug 31: First additional sessions judge, Jammu, M A Chowdhary today awarded four years imprisonment to ex-executive engineer (XEn) Rajinder Nath Raina for changing his date of birth (DoB) in service records.
The matter was brought to the notice of IGP of Crime Branch (CB) of police by then Chief Engineer (procurement and material management), PDD, alleging therein that the audit party of Accountant General, Srinagar, had pointed out that the date of birth recorded in the service book of Xen Raina seemed to have been obliterated.
For clarification, the CE's office referred the matter to State Board of School Education. The board joint secretary (verification) had confirmed the XEn's DoB as July 26, 1942 instead of July 26, 1944 as recorded in his service book. The matter was then referred to the administrative department for further necessary action which in turn vide letter No PDD-V/36/96 of October 21, 2002 asked to refer the matter to CB. After the matter came to be referred to it, CB registered a case for the commission of offences punishable under sections 420, 467 and 468 of RPC. CB took the samples of XEn's hand writting and sent them to FSL along with his service book. In its report, FSL reported that the DoB had been tampered with and, by adding two years to his job, he had drawn an amount of Rs 5,20,774 from the public exchequer. As per the actual DoB, Rajinder Nath Raina, son of Bhaskar Nath Raina of Karan Nagar here, was to retire on July 31, 2000.
After hearing the two sides, the judge observed that the facts and circumstances of the case and protracted trial since January 2006 to August 2016 and the accused's attendance on each date of hearing, were almost equivalent to the judicial custody on that day. "This court is of the considered opinion that it would be appropriate that the accused is sentenced to four years of imprisonment for the commission of offence punishable under section 471 of RPC," he ordered. He was also fined Rs 2,00,000. (JNF) |
