JAIPUR: A court in Jaipur has rejected a plea filed by the Congress government to withdraw case against three bureaucrats in connection with alleged irregularity in a land deed transfer case.
The accused include a serving officer and two retired officers, including a former IAS officer.
The application for the withdrawal of prosecution against retired IAS officer GS Sandhu, retired RAS officer Nishkam Diwakar, and serving RAS officer Onkarmal Saini, was rejected on Friday by a special Judge, ACB cases, a court official said on Saturday.
"The ACB court has rejected the government's application to withdraw prosecution against three on Friday,” advocate Sandesh Khandelwal, counsel for Ram Sharan, the person who had filed the complaint in 2014, said.
He said the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) had submitted a chargesheet against them in the court in 2016.
Sandhu, who is currently an adviser to the Urban Development and Housing (UDH) department, was its principal secretary when the alleged irregularities were committed.
The alleged infraction involved the issuing of a single ‘patta', or a single deed, under Congress rule in 2011, of over 27301.50 square yard land belonging to a builder in a society.
The deed was however cancelled.
A case in this connection was filed with the ACB by Ram Sharan Singh in 2014.
The ACB had filed the chargesheet against six accused including GS Sandhu, Nishkam Diwakar and Onkarmal Saini. The Other three accused were private men when the charges were filed.
When the Congress government returned to power in 2018, Sandhu and two others gave a representation to the state government to withdraw the case following which a committee was formed.
On the basis of the committee's report, an application was moved in the court to withdraw the case in January this year.
It was argued that the three were not mentioned in the original complaint and that none of them accrued any person benefit from the deal, nor any harm was done.
