A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in Gauhati High Court for bringing two Assam police officials, one retired and the other serving, within the ambit of the CBI probe into the Saradha scam.
The petitioner, Dulal Bora, stated that the Assam government abruptly closed its inquiry against IPS officers A.P. Raut (retd) and S.N. Singh, conducted for their alleged involvement in the scam in the state, without discussing the matter with the CBI which was entrusted by the high court to investigate the scam.
Raut retired from service on October 31 last year as the director-general (civil defence and home guards) while Singh is currently posted as additional director-general of police (communication).
Bora made a prayer before the high court for handing over the inquiry against Raut and Singh to the CBI.
A division bench of Chief Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice Arup Kumar Goswami on Monday directed the Assam government and the CBI to furnish their replies to the PIL in a week.
The scam had affected lakhs of people in Assam, mostly from the lower income groups, who found their deposits wiped out.
The previous Congress-led state government had forwarded the case to the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption after being intimated by the ministry of home affairs. The directorate, the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate had also launched their own investigations into the scam.
In a reply to an RTI application, the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption had said that an inquiry was initiated against the two police officers but the government had kept it in “abeyance” based on the “representation” submitted by them. Subsequently, it added, the regular inquiry was closed on December 12 last year through a notification (PLA(V)327/2014/ECF-63381/ 158) based on “available records”. Afterwards, it was found that the complaint was “pseudonymous”, it added.
In his petition, Bora said he was shocked and surprised to learn that the inquiry against the two officers was closed by the state government treating the same as “pseudonymous”.
