DD ex-employee's FIR plea against IB secy trashed

A Delhi court has dismissed the plea of a former Doordarshan cameraman to lodge a corruption case against the information and broadcasting secretary and various officials of the public broadcaster for want of requisite statutory sanction for it.

“In the absence of sanction from competent authority as contemplated under section 19(1)(c) of the Prevention of Corruption Act for launching prosecution against accused persons, this court is debarred from taking cognisance for the alleged offence as submitted in the complaint and therefore this complaint deserves to be dismissed on this count itself,” special judge B R Kedia said.

Former DD cameraman P P Singh had filed the complaint in the court seeking its direction to lodge the FIR against the IB secretary and other officials of the national broadcaster under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

He had alleged that DD officials had been allotting work to their “own persons to advance their own interests” and the persons, to whom the works were allotted were “inefficient”.
Singh also alleged victimisation “at the hands of senior officers” saying he was neither promoted nor given suitable exposure in work.

He sought FIR against DD’s former additional director general Deepak Sandhu, former director Muthu Kumar and other officials, including Nilima Harjal and S Mithias. A special judge is “incompetent” to refer a complaint for police probe as he or she is not a magistrate, empowered under the CrPC, to order registration of FIRs, the court said.