Court adjourns hearing on PF scam to Mar 14

Ghaziabad, Feb 18 (PTI) The special CBI court, trying theRs 6.58 crore provident fund scam in which six retired judgesare accused, today adjourned the hearing in the case to March14 in view of the one-day strike called by the lawyers here.

CBI had filed a charge sheet against 78 people, includingsix retired judges, in the case involving alleged fraudulentwithdrawal of crores of rupees, between 2001 and 2008, from PFof employees posted at Ghaziabad district court.

Six accused retired judges -- R P Mishra, R P Yadav, R NMishra, A K Singh, R S Chaubey and Arun Kumar -- were asked toappear before the court on Friday. However, all of them didnot turn up in the last hearing citing medical reasons.

CBI judge A K Singh had asked them to appear before it onFebruary 18, failing which warrants would be issued againstthem. They were all present in the court today.

The scam was exposed after special CBI judge Rama Jainlodged a criminal case against 70 people at Kavi Nagar policestation on February 15, 2008. However, no judge was named inthe FIR.

While Ashutosh Asthana, the key accused who died in DasnaJail in mysterious circumstances on November 18, 2009, hadnamed 36 judges of the Supreme Court, high court and districtcourts as accused, the apex court permitted CBI to prosecuteonly six of them, now retired.