By IANS
New Delhi : A city court remanded multi-million-rupee land scam accused Ashok Malhotra and seven others in judicial custody till Dec 13 after they surrendered in the court on the expiry of their interim bail Friday.
Special Judge S.K. Kaushik remanded prime accused Malhotra, three Delhi Development Authority (DDA) officials Jeet Ram Gaur, A.K. Mishra, Sumer Chand Garg, three Muncipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) officials Atul Vashisth, S.N. S. Sidhu and Philip Toppo, and businessman Ashok Jain till the next date of hearing Dec 13 in connection with the Molarband land scam case.
After going through the chargesheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the court said, “The sanction for prosecution against accused Gaur, Shyam Babu, Ajay Kumar Sharma, Sunil Kumar Sharma has been taken by the competent authority, and I accordingly took cognizance of the chargesheet and summoned them for December 13, including one K.S. Verma (a retired official of DDA).”
The probe agency submitted to the court that an accused, under-secretary of Delhi Vidhan Sabha Lal Mani, who was not arrested by it, committed the offences not in the capacity as a public servant but in his private capacity and therefore no sanction for his prosecution was necessary.
The court fixed Nov 28 for hearing of the regular bail application of accused Malhotra, Toppo, Sandhu and others.
Malhotra, who was the kingpin of the scam, prepared fake and forged documents like ration-cards, identity cards, photographs and bank documents in the name of non-existent applicants for allotment of land.
The CBI had Nov 5 filed six chargesheets against Malhotra and others who had allegedly made millions of rupees through bogus plot allotments in collusion with Lal Mani and officials of DDA and MCD.
The DDA officials Gaur, Mishra, Verma, Garg, and MCD officials Vashisth, Sidhu and Toppo allegedly joined in the conspiracy by accepting Malhotra’s forged applications to facilitate the allotment of plots, which were meant for resettlement of slum dwellers.
Malhotra was arrested Aug 6 from a private news channel studio in Noida.