The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed trial of six former judges and other accused in the multi-crore Ghaziabad court provident fund scam case after the CBI alleged that district judge there had been “interfering” in the trial proceedings in the special court.
Terming the alleged “interference” by district judge S.C. Gupta in the independent functioning of the special CBI court as “extremely disturbing”, Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati in a five-page affidavit sought immediate transfer of the case to Tis Hazari Court in Delhi for a fair trial.
Following AG’s request, a bench of Justices D.K. Jain, V.S. Sirpurkar and G.S. Singhvi stayed the trial and asked the CBI to file an affidavit with complete addresses of the chargesheeted judges and other accused persons by August 4 so that notices could be issued to them.
The apex court said issuing notices to them was necessary under the law to seek their response to the transfer application. Meanwhile, the CBI in a fresh status report submitted to the top court gave details of the investigation so far, which had resulted in chargesheeting of three former Allahabad HC judges and three retired district judges of Ghaziabad.
The chargesheeted HC judges are — R.P. Yadav, R.N. Mishra and A.K. Singh and district judges are R.P. Mishra, R.S. Choubey and Arun Kumar.
According to CBI chargesheet, Rs 7.92 crore were withdrawn form the employees PF through 781 cheques between April 2000 and February 2008 before the scam came to light. The cheques were issued in the names of Class-III and Class-IV employees and payments were withdrawn by treasury in-charge Ashutosh Asthana. Of the total amount, Rs 6.58 crore was withdrawn “fraudulently” through 482 cheques, the CBI had said.
A-G said the present district judge of Ghaziabad has been issuing “oral instructions” to the UP police to file application before the special CBI court functioning under his jurisdiction to become “party” to the case. The district judge was even seeking case diary form the UP police, which investigated the case before it was handed over to the CBI, he said. “When the case has been transferred to the CBI, UP police has no role to play in the case,” the A-G said.