Court acquits then Director ULB & ors in illegal appointment case
JKUT (Jammu), December-21-2021-( JNF):- Additional Sessions Judge Anticorruption Jammu Ritesh Dubey acquitted Mohinder Singh then Director Local bodies Jammu, Sat Pal Saini then Administrator NAC Lakhanpur and Ravi Kumar then I/CExecutive Officer NAC Katra in illegal appointment case after facing trial for16 years.
According to the VOJ (now ACB) case that a PE was conducted on the complaint lodged by Dr. Romesh Chander Sharma MLA Nowshera followed by letter No. 312 dated 24-04-2003 from private Secretary to MOS Housing and Urban Development that despite a ban on recruitment, the then Director Local bodies Mohinder Singh illegally appointed Devinder Singh s/o. Mukhtyar Singh who was later transferred along with post to Municipality Poonch. The enquiry revealed that Mohinder Singh had issued appointment/regularization orders in respect of 10 individuals named in the charge sheet, by abusing his official position, and in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy hatched with Sat Pal Saini the then Administrator NAC Lakhanpur and the beneficiaries accused. Enquiry revealed that 7 out of the 10 illegal appointees were close relatives of Sat Paul Saini. These appointment orders were issued without advertising the posts, inviting the applications and conducting interviews, obviously for extraneous considerations. Also the appointments were made by the accused against non- available posts, with ulterior motive of conferring undue pecuniary benefits upon the beneficiaries and putting state exchequer to loss and the instant case was registered, and investigation was done. The beneficiaries were found engaged, or/and regularized first, then posted to some other district, and then brought back within a small period of 3/4 months respectively. For some of the beneficiaries, recommendations were found marked to the Director by the Special Assistant/PA to MOS H&UDD. All the 10 illegal beneficiaries did not face any interview. Some had not even applied. This clearly indicated that all these appointment were made on pick and choose basis. Investigation revealed that Mohinder Singh the then DLBJ in connivance with Sat Paul Saini the then Administrator NAC Lakhanpur, Ravi Kumar the then Executive officer NAC Katra/Batote, Nanak Singh the then Executive Officer NAC R.S Pura and Irshad Hussain, the then Executive office NAC Nowshera, issued the engagement/ appointment orders in March, July, October and December 2002,in respect of illegal beneficiaries, in different local bodies of Jammu province without any available vacancy, in view of extraneous considerations willfully, and in violation of various Government orders/notifications/ SROs mentioned in the charge sheet.
Additional Sessions Judge Anticorruption Jammu Ritesh Kumar Dubey after hearing Sr. Adv Abhinav Sharma, Advocates SC Bali, AP Singh and Ajay Bakshi for the alleged accused persons observed that the fact that beneficiaries were regularized in short span of time after their initial appointments. Though the same may appear to be little unusual yet the same again can not be said to be by way of criminal misuse of authority in view of the established facts and circumstances such as no illegality was found in initial appointments, no rules or practices governing such cases have been established by the prosecution, and Government Orders including SRO 64 have been observed herein before as not applicable to present appointments. If the prosecution basis its claim on the wrongfulness of regularizations, it ought to have established the reasons for the same. But except for a submission as to application of SRO 64, the prosecution has not been able to prove why the said regularizations were not valid. It is noted again that the non-removal of appointees/regularized officials from said service, itself supports the defence submission that there was nothing wrong in the same.
Court further observed that there is no doubt that the appointments, on their face, may not appear to be done in a very healthy manner. But the trials and the judgments are not to be based on suppositions and assumptions, and prosecution case does not get proved on the face of its accusations. And the prosecution has to establish and prove its case by leading cogent evidence. The evidence as could be tendered in this regard was to present exact rules, procedures, regulating appointments in the local body institutions. But that has not been done by the investigating and prosecution agencies. Further, the conduct of the accused herein could have been criminal if the same was a deviation from the practices followed in the appointments in Local Body Institution. It is noted again that no such deviation is established in the present case in view of the lack of evidence to establish such practice. Without proving the practice, obviously the deviation could not be established, Court said.It is further noted again that no breach of the relevant Government Orders/SROs regarding regularization, ban etc, is found committed by the accused.
With these observations, Court is not convinced that the prosecution has been able to remove the element of doubt from its accusations against the accused as well as the charge framed by this court, by such strong evidence as could lead to one and only one hypothesis pointing to the guilt of the accused and ordered that the accused are acquitted of the charge for the offences under sections 5(1)(d) r/w 5(2) PC Act Svt. and 120-B RPC, framed by this court. The challan is dismissed. JNF 