JOIN USAn MCD official was awarded a four-year jail term by a special CBI court which found him guilty of possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income in a 12-year-old case.
Special CBI judge V K Maheshwari also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Netrapal Singh, 62, who was a section officer in horticulture department of MCD in 2000.
Singh was found possessing assets worth Rs 23.65 lakh, disproportionate to his known sources of income. While pronouncing the sentence, the court barred Singh from disposing of his assets.
“One of the most effective measure to check corruption is that corrupt public servants should not be allowed to reap the benefits of the crop of corruption sowed by them using corrupt means,” the judge said, adding, “Assets worth equivalent to the disproportionate assets accumulated by the convict Netrapal Singh by illegal means be forfeited by the state”.
“Convict is directed not to sell, alienate, transfer, mortgage or dispose of such assets which are in his name or in the name of any of his family members, in any manner.”
Singh was also directed not to withdraw any amount from saving bank accounts or encash fixed deposits or term deposits involved in this case.
Earlier, arguing in the case, CBI’s special prosecutor N Matta pointed out that Singh had produced fake, fictitious and concocted evidence to justify his disproportionate assets.
Court rejects CBI’s plea
A Delhi court has rejected CBI’s plea to close a case in which two government servants were accused of bribing a person to desist him from seeking certain information under the Right to Information Act.
The court directed CBI to further probe the case in which an assistant engineer and a junior engineer of Delhi Jal Board were accused of giving Rs 1 lakh bribe to complainant Sant Ram who had sought information regarding submersible and mono-block pumps installed from 2004 to 2011.
DJB’s assistant engineer Sushil Kumar Jain and junior engineer P K Sharma were arrested by CBI sleuths on September 29 last year when they gave the bribe to Sant Ram and had also got a note signed from the complainant to the effect that “he had received the Right to Information reply as sought for”.
The CBI had filed the closure report on July 5 this year saying in such instances, the Prevention of Corruption Act is “inapplicable since the bribe was paid to a private individual and not a public servant”.