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Cash at a judge's door, but case
is closed
WSN Network
CHANDIGARH:
After a Sikh judge of Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice
Nirmaljit Kaur, called the police when a stranger delivered Rs 15
lakh in cash at her residence, the trail led to another judge with a
similar name: Justice Nirmal Yadav.
As the matter
became the subject of extensive media reporting, and the CBI also
got into it, the probe was abruptly closed and the people were told
that there wasn't anything much in the entire episode.
The matter
however is refusing to die down.
Now, Anupam
Gupta, who was the special public prosecutor for the Chandigarh
Administration prior to handing over the investigation to the CBI in
2008, has raised questions over the motive and intention behind
CBI's closure of the case.
He is making the
hard cash an issue. Taking a dig at the description of Rs 15 lakh as
"disputed" by the CBI, Gupta said: "For the CBI to describe this
amount as disputed in the closure report appears to be a conspiracy
in itself. The CBI's concluding recommendation that Rs 15 lakh be
confiscated is astounding."
The fact remains
that a judicial officer of the state, an additional advocate general
of Haryana, Sanjiv Bansal, had admitted that he indeed had got the
cash delivered. "The Rs 15 lakh seized by Chandigarh Police on
August 13, 2008 undoubtedly belonged to Bansal as per the
interrogation report signed by him," Gupta has said.
The CBI had
recommended that the amount of Rs 15 lakh be confiscated as none of
the suspects in the case had calimed rightful ownership. However,
the signed interogation report of Sanjiv Bansal and co-accused n the
case clearly states that the money belongs to him.
Expressing shock
at the legal opinion of the then Attorney General, Gupta said: "The
Chief Justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishan; former Atoorney General
Milon Banerjee and the CBI have betrayed the nation. The Attorney
General to opine that there is no even a shred of evidence that the
said alleged offences were committed by Bansal, co-accused Ravinder
Singh and Nirmal Singh in conspiracy with Justice Yadav is a
shocking travesty of the truth."
A report in the
Indian Express quotd Gupta as saying: "For the premier agency, the
call details of Ravinder Singh Sanjiv Bansal and Justice Nirmal
Yadav are incontrovertible evidence of the close link between
Ravinder Singh and Justice Yadav on the one hand and Sanjiv Bansal
and Ravinder Singh on the other. How could the Attorney General and
the CJI have overlooked the call details and why are the call
details completely missing from the closure report even though they
occupy such a prominent place in the Gokhale committee report?"
For those
fighting for probity in judical domain, the case has moved along
disappointing paths.
27January 2010
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