MCD official surrenders before CBI court

New Delhi, Sep 21 (UNI) Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Upper Division clerk Atul Vashisht, wanted in land grabbing scam involving Delhi Vidhan Sabha canteen contractor Ashok Malhotra, today surrendered in the court of special CBI Judge S K Kaushik.

CBI formally arrested him and took him on a 14 days remand.

Earlier, on August 25 the CBI court had issued a Non-bailable warrant against him.

Vashisht said before the court that he has no role to play in the scam and whatever he did was on the instruction of S N S Sidhu, Director in Slum Upgradation and Rehabilitation wing of MCD.

Sidhu was named by the CBI in the FIR as one of the accused and presently he is in judicial custody, which also has Ashok Malhotra,the alleged kingpin in the DDA land scam,as another accused.

According to the FIR, registered on July 24, the probe into the land scam began on the basis of information which revealed Malhotra's nexus with DDA officials in grabbing the land worth crores of rupees.

It was alleged that Malhotra entered into a criminal conspiracy with five DDA officials and filed applications for allotment of plots under the scheme using fictitious names, claiming to be erstwhile residents of Hudson Lines.

The case in which Malhotra was booked along with DDA officials including K S Verma, then deputy director (retired), J R Gaur, then assistant director, A K Mishra, then deputy director, Shyam Babu,then assistant engineer and S K Sharma, then junior engineer pertained to the resettlement of Hudson Lines JJ colony in north Delhi.

UNI