Magistrate allows forgery charges against Teesta, husband

Ahmedabad additional chief metropolitan magistrate on Monday permitted Crime Branch to add IPC sections 467, 468 and 471 against activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand, accused of embezzlement. 

Ahmedabad Crime Branch had early this month requested the Court to allow them to add Section 467 (Forgery), Section 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (fraudulently or dishonestly using a forged document as genuine) in the FIR No-1/2014 filed against the couple.

Teesta allegedly collected Rs 1.51 crore in funds through her two NGOs – Sabrang Trust and Citizen for Justice & Peace (CJP) - from domestic and international donors with a promise to convert riot-hit Gulberg society into a museum.

Instead, it is alleged that she used the funds for her personal expenses. In 2014, Ahmedabad police registered an FIR following complaints filed by former residents of Gulberg Society a year-and-a-half ago in 2013.

The residents apparently claimed that money collected in their name had not reached them. Setalvad on her part stated that since the Gulberg Society survivors would not get a fair price for their flats, Sabrang Trust would try raising funds to build a museum in memorial of the massacre.

The CJP, she claimed, had nothing to do with the project.
She later said she had to abandon the project as she could only raise Rs 4.6 lakh. As for the Trust funds, she claimed that they had been audited and submitted before the concerned authorities.