Fresh summons issued to 3 former IAS officers

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 20

The Special CBI Court today issued fresh summons to three former IAS officers and Director, Unitech Ltd, in the decade-old amusement-cum-theme park project at Sarangpur, which now stands scrapped, for January 28.

On January 6, 2020, the Special CBI Court had rejected the third closure report of the investigating agency and issued summons to the accused under Sections 420 (cheating), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC and Section 13(1) d read with Section 13(2) (criminal misconduct by a public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. However, the summons could not be served on them.

On indictment of the officers, the court said: “Prima facie, it is evident that accused Lalit Sharma, then adviser to Administrator, Krishan Mohan, then UT Home Secretary, and Vivek Atray, then Director, Tourism, abused their official position and by hatching criminal conspiracy with each other and with accused Unitech Ltd through its director Ajay Chandra committed cheating, thereby caused wrongful loss to the Chandigarh Administration and wrongful gain to themselves.”

The court also stated that the four accused prima facie are also liable for disappearance of the file concerned, being the beneficiaries.

According to the prosecution, in 2009, RTI activist Vivek Aditya had complained to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) about alleged financial irregularities in the project. Later, the case was transferred to the CBI. The CVC, too, submitted a report to the CBI, highlighting its crucial findings.

On October 4, 2010, the CBI registered an FIR against the three IAS officers and Unitech Limited (through its representative — director Ajay Chandra) for corruption, abuse of power and criminal conspiracy.

It was alleged that the former senior officers of the Chandigarh Administration, in connivance with Unitech, indulged in a “criminal conspiracy” and awarded 73.65 acres of land in Sarangpur to the firm for Rs 5.5 crore fixed annual licence fee and on 1.1 per cent annual revenue sharing basis. It was alleged that the Administration ignored financial rules while inviting tenders and short-listing companies and that these officers had allegedly “ignored” the highest bidder, DLF. The project has since been scrapped.