Court pulls up CBI for filing charge sheet to shield accused

New Delhi, Feb 5: A city court has lambasted the CBI for preparing a charge sheet in a graft and cheating case to "deliberately shield" the accused and summoned a senior agency officer to personally clarify the lapses.

"It appears that the CBI has prepared this charge sheet deliberately in this manner, so as to shield the accused persons, Special CBI Judge Brijesh Garg said after perusing the final report in the case. He noted that relevant documents and the reports have not been placed on record along with the present final report and there were a "large number of lapses" in it.

"In the circumstances, summons be issued to H C Sharma, Superintendent of Police, CBI, ACU­VII, New Delhi, who has forwarded the present final report, to appear in person and to make clarifications," the court said.

It also asked the investigating officer (IO) of the case to be present in the court on the next date of hearing on February 12 and directed him to produce the complete crime file of investigation for its perusal.

The case allegedly involves the Medical Council of India (MCI) officials and a medical college in Thiruvananthapuram. A charge sheet was filed in the case registered in 2014 against then MCI's additional secretary Dr Prasanna Raj, then deputy secretary Anshu Sethi Bajaj, Principal of Somervell Medical College Samson Nessaih and others under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of IPC and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

CBI had earlier alleged that old and pending application of this medical college, seeking PG seats, was dealt and processed unauthorisedly in MCI and Letter of Permission (LoP) was issued after the ast date of March 31, 2012.

"It was further alleged that the deficiencies pointed out by the assessors in their inspection report in 2011 still prevailed in the medical college and machines which were to be installed before sending the compliance to MCI were actually installed after that date," the agency said.

CBI had said the bank guarantee which was mentioned to have been submitted by the college to MCI along with the compliance letter was not actually submitted on time.

"The college was not granted LoP for preceding year because of the said reasons. The undue favours were allegedly shown to the college on the part of the officials of MCI by ignoring the relevant regulations and necessary permissions were granted which resulted in significant pecuniary benefits to the private medical college," CBI had alleged.

It also claimed that the college Principal in conspiracy with MCI officials allegedly submitted false information for the purpose of getting the required permission and hence cheated the MCI.

PTI