NEW DELHI: Six retired public servants have been sentenced to one year imprisonment by a Delhi court in one of the corruption cases pertaining to a Rs 4000 crore cooperative group housing society (CGHS) scam which dates back to the 1970s.
The seventh convict, who was a private person, has been sentenced to three years in jail for the offences of forgery, cheating and using a forged document as genuine under IPC.
Special CBI Judge Manoj Jain sentenced former Registrar Cooperative Societies (RCS) Narayan Diwakar, dealing assistant Faiz Mohammad, senior auditor P K Thirwani, assistant registrar Yogi Raj, upper division clerk U S Bhatnagar and RCS inspecting officer Ram Nath to one year simple imprisonment and also slapped a fine of Rs 30,000 on each of them.
The court held Diwakar and five ex-public servants guilty of various offences under IPC relating to attempting to cheat, forgery and using forged documents as genuine and under the Prevention of Corruption Act for attempting to commit criminal misconduct.
"Angle of conspiracy stands proved to the hilt.
Complicity of public servants accused is very evident. RCS officials were supposed to apply horse sense and they rather completely ignored the basic things and the application in question was entertained without raising any eyebrow," the judge said in his order last week.
The court while sentencing Delhi resident Gokul Chand Aggarwal, a private person, also directed him to pay a fine of Rs 70,000.
The judge observed that "fortunately it remained a case of attempted cheating only as the conspiracy got unearthed before the land could be actually allotted at reserve price."
The seven convicts had fraudulently tried to revive the already liquidated Anand CGHS by forging documents and showing non-existent members.
According to CBI, Anand CGHS was allotted a land in Pitampura by DDA in 1975 for a token money but due to the failure of the society to pay the remaining amount, it was liquidated by RCS.