*Director refuses to specify period for completion of probe
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Nov 12: State Vigilance Organization (SVO) today came under sharp criticism from the Division Bench of State High Court for its lackadaisical handling of six FIRs registered in the biggest ever land fraud of Jammu and Kashmir called ‘Roshni Scam’ with Chief Justice M M Kumar dubbing it as ‘lazy organization’.
Astonishingly, despite being pulled up for going soft on the grave issue, State Vigilance Organization failed to specify any period for completion of probe into these FIRs when the opportunity was given for the same by the Division Bench. This has been viewed very seriously by the Chief Justice, who will pass detailed order. In the order, Chief Justice may fix specific period to ensure that these FIRs reach logical conclusion in a time bound manner.
When the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) titled Prof S K Bhalla Versus State of J&K and Others came up for hearing, Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmad appearing for the petitioner drew the attention of the Division Bench comprising Chief Justice M M Kumar and Justice Tashi Rabstan towards the latest status report filed by Director Vigilance, Sheikh Owais Ahmad on October 14, 2014.
“The perusal of the status report clearly indicates that probe into multi-crore Roshni Scam is going on at a snail’s pace and no seriousness is being shown to take these six FIRs registered on the intervention of this court to the logical conclusion”, he said, adding “each and every status report filed by the State Vigilance Organization till date only states that investigation is going on”.
Keeping in view the pace of investigation into these six FIRs, one can easily presume as to when this biggest ever land scam would come to the logical conclusion and the accused officers and officials besides beneficiaries would be taken to task under law, counsel for the PIL said in the open court. “It seems that intention of the SVO is not to bring facts to the fore but to conceal the same by prolonging the investigation in order to shield the beneficiary politicians, bureaucrats and police officers under the pressure of the Government”, he added.
From the slackness in handling already registered FIRs, it can easily be presumed that nobody in the State Vigilance Organization wants to reach the roots of the scam and punish the guilty, Advocate Ahmad said while mentioning that these FIRs were registered on the basis of observations made by the Comptroller and Auditor General in its report based on the test checked cases.
Taking serious note of the lackadaisical handling of FIRs in Roshni Scam, Chief Justice, in the open court, asked Senior Additional Advocate General, Gagan Basotra to explain the reasons behind delay in completion of probe and timeframe within which the same would be completed.
However, Mr Basotra tried to ‘justify’ the delay by stating that time was being consumed in view of very detailed exercise required to be carried out by the Special Investigation Teams (SITs) constituted to probe the cases.
On this, Chief Justice, in the open court, remarked: “We want SVO to live up to its name. It should not function like other Government departments. SVO has to act swiftly so that evidence is not destroyed and culprits are brought to book”, adding “Vigilance Organization cannot be slack otherwise we will have to change its nomenclature”.
Mr Basotra further tried to explain the reasons behind delay but Chief Justice inclined to register his arguments and further remarked, “we know why delay is happening…put your house in order otherwise we would be compelled to teach appropriate lesson”.
“These are only six FIRs and others will come up with the progress in investigation and how SVO would handle the entire scam with such lackadaisical approach”, Chief Justice further said in the open court.
Expressing apprehension about SVO taking excuse of floods in not taking these cases to the logical conclusion, Justice Kumar, in the open court, said, “in order to ensure that tomorrow nobody gets up and says that evidence or record got damaged in the floods, I got inspections of the courts in the flood-hit areas conducted through my brother Judges and according to their reports, the record is safe”.
On the specific query from the Chief Justice, Senior AAG sought some time to seek instructions from the Director Vigilance on the timeframe about completion of probe into six FIRs and accordingly the PIL was put for hearing in the second half.
When the PIL again came up for hearing, Senior AAG was again non-committal on the timeframe and said, “in these FIRs huge number of documents are to be scrutinized to point out the illegalities and zero in on connivance between the beneficiaries and officers of the Revenue Department as such no time frame can be specified”.
On this, Chief Justice, in the open court, dubbed State Vigilance Organization as “Lazy Organization” and made it clear that Division Bench would pass detailed order on these six FIRs. It is expected that Division Bench may fix specific timeline for taking these cases to the logical conclusion.
It is pertinent to mention here that EXCELSIOR in its edition dated October 21 had exclusively carried a news-item highlighting that probe into multi-crore Roshni Scam was going on at snail’s pace and State Vigilance Organization was continuing to indulge in blame-game with the Deputy Commissioners of six districts and Revenue Department.
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