Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 21: Additional Sessions Judge Anticorruption Jammu Ritesh Dubey has acquitted Mohinder Singh, the then Director Local bodies Jammu, Sat Pal Saini, the then Administrator NAC Lakhanpur and Ravi Kumar, the then I/C Executive Officer NAC Katra in illegal appointment case after facing trial for16 years.
After hearing Senior Advocate Abhinav Sharma, Advocates SC Bali, AP Singh and Ajay Bakshi for the alleged accused persons observed, the court observed, “it is stated that beneficiaries were regularized in short span of time after their initial appointments. Though the same may appear to be little unusual yet the same again cannot be said to be by way of criminal misuse of authority in view of the established facts and circumstances such as no illegality was found in initial appointments, no rules or practices governing such cases have been established by the prosecution, and Government Orders including SRO 64 have been observed before as not applicable to present appointments”.
“If the prosecution basis its claim on the wrongfulness of regularizations, it ought to have established the reasons for the same. But except for a submission as to application of SRO 64, the prosecution has not been able to prove why the regularizations were not valid. It is noted again that the non-removal of appointees/regularized officials from said service, itself supports the defence submission that there was nothing wrong in the same”, the court said.
Court further observed, “there is no doubt that the appointments, on their face, may not appear to be done in a very healthy manner. But the trials and the judgments are not to be based on suppositions and assumptions, and prosecution case does not get proved on the face of its accusations”, adding “the prosecution has to establish and prove its case by leading cogent evidence. The evidence as could be tendered in this regard was to present exact rules, procedures, regulating appointments in the local body institutions. But that has not been done by the investigating and prosecution agencies”.
“Further, the conduct of the accused could have been criminal if the same was a deviation from the practices followed in the appointments in local body institution. It is noted again that no such deviation is established in the present case in view of the lack of evidence to establish such practice. Without proving the practice, obviously the deviation could not be established”, court said, adding “no breach of the relevant Government Orders/SROs regarding regularization, ban etc, is found committed by the accused”.
With these observations, court said that prosecution has been able to remove the element of doubt from its accusations against the accused as well as the charge framed by this court and ordered that the accused are acquitted of the charge for the offences under Sections 5(1)(d) r/w 5(2) PC Act Svt. and 120-B RPC.
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