Fake appraisal note: CBI Law Officer in trouble

Beena Raizada's job is to advise the CBI on corruption cases, but the law officer now faces a criminal case after she was allegedly found submitting appraisal reports, which gave her "excellent" ratings but with forged signatures of a senior IPS officer.

Raizada, a Deputy Legal Advisor of the CBI in its Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) in New Delhi, now faces charges of cheating and forgery with the CBI registering an FIR against her on Monday.

The FIR comes after a preliminary enquiry by CBI's Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashish Prasad, who claimed to have found material in registering a regular case. Following his report that there was "interpolation in assessment notes" submitted by Raizada, the FIR was filed.

According to the complaint filed by Prasad on the basis of his enquiry, Raizada had forged the signature of then CBI officer V K Singh, who was in ACB, Patna in the assessment notes of 2014, 2015 and 2016. Singh is presently Inspector General in Jaipur.

She had joined the CBI as a Senior Public Prosecutor in May 2014 and was promoted as Deputy Legal Advisor in November same year. She was transferred to New Delhi in January 2017.

In the Directorate of Prosecution in Delhi, the complaint that is part of the FIR said, she submitted three Annual Performance Appraisal Report (APAR) together for the years starting 2014 along with assessment notes bearing the signatures of Singh. "All the said three assessment notes certified the performance by Beena Raizada as excellent," it said.

During an enquiry, Singh told the CBI that the signatures on the assessment notes "resemble his signatures but he had not made those signatures".

Singh also said Raizada was not on duty for 90 days during 2014 and 2015 and there was "no question of writing assessment report in her favour". Similarly, there was "no question" of him writing a note for her in 2016 as he was already repatriated to his parent department in 2015.

The investigations also found that Singh was not the authorised person to write the assessment notes for Raizada as was not working under him when she was Deputy Legal Advisor.