JAIPUR: Rajasthan’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) uses a lot of its time and energy to trap a public servant and expose corrupt practices.
However, delayed prosecution sanction sometimes benefit the public servants who apply for bail and even get reinstated. To take every corruption case to its logical conclusion, the ACB compulsorily needs prosecution sanction, which is a tiring exercise. This year, so far, none of the cases registered by ACB has got the prosecution sanction.
In many cases, including that of the two SDMs posted in Dausa district, Dausa SP, subinspector of Mumbai police, the ACB is awaiting prosecution sanction from the state and central governments.
TOI on Saturday attempted to find out the status of some high-profile cases in which the agency had worked hard to successfully trap the officials.
“In majority of the cases, including of the SDMs Pushkar Mittal and Pinki Meena, IPS officer Manish Agarwal, Baran collector Inder Singh Rao and others, the prosecution sanction is awaited. We have been pursuing it with the departments concerned along with the investigating officers of these cases. Though, in many cases, we have filed the charge-sheet, courts are yet to take cognizance in the absence of prosecution sanction,” B L Soni, DG, ACB told TOI.
“For IAS and IPS officers, we need prosecution sanction from both the state and central governments. For example, in the case of Inder Singh Rao, the then Baran collector, we have got prosecution sanction from the state government, but it is still awaited from the central government,” Soni added.
According to sources, various departments from whom ACB is demanding prosecution sanction have taken a plea of second wave of Covid-19. “We are sending them various incriminating documents related to the public servant who was trapped by us. However, the competent authorities are telling us that they could not see the documents due to the second wave of Covid,” said a senior officer of ACB on the condition of anonymity.
As per data available with ACB, prosecution sanction for 381 cases is pending this year. “This includes prosecution sanction of some cases that were registered in 2020 too,” said an officer.
