By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Tuesday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the fraudulent withdrawal of funds worth Rs.70 million from the Ghaziabad court treasury with several higher judiciary judges, including one from the apex court, allegedly benefiting from it.
Transferring the probe to the CBI from the Ghaziabad police, a bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat asked the agency to submit within three months its status report on probe into the fraudulent withdrawal of provident funds of Ghaziabad court staffers between 2001 and 2008.
The bench, which also included Justice V.S. Sirpurkar and Justice G.S. Singhvi, however, granted the CBI freedom to complete the probe, if possible, and file its report on it to the relevant trial court before the stipulated deadline.
“The court before which the final report/charge sheet will be placed will deal according to the law,” it said.
It asked the CBI director to nominate a suitable investigating officer to head and supervise the probe with the freedom to take assistance of Uttar Pradesh government officials.
The bench also directed the state government to provide all possible logistic, infrastructure and manpower support to the agency.
It instructed the CBI to prepare the microfilms of all evidentiary and other documents, gathered by the Ghaziabad police till now, and submit the copy to it, while keeping the original documents with itself.
The apex court transferred the probe to the CBI on a plea by the Ghaziabad Bar Association (GBA), which had submitted to the court that the local police might be ill-equipped to investigate the matter as the names of several sitting and retired judges, including those of the Allahabad and Calcutta high courts besides an apex court judge, had cropped up as beneficiaries of the fraudulent fund withdrawal.
GBA counsel Anil Diwan on Sep 9 told the court that even the Ghaziabad senior superintendent of police (SSP) has repeatedly written to the state’s director general of police (DGP) about the difficulties in probing the matter further apparently due to the involvement of the members of judiciary.
The Ghaziabad police too accordingly wanted the probe to be handed over to the CBI.