In a major decision, Chhattisgarh High court Bilaspur on Thursday directed CBI to file an FIR against Union Minister of State Renuka Singh and 15 officers, including seven IAS officers, for their alleged involvement in a Rs 10-billion financial scam.

The PIL (public interest litigation) was initially filed as a writ petition by Kundan Singh Thakur from Raipur and was heard by the bench of Justice Prashant Mishra and Parth Prateem Sahu. The bench had reserved the decision and announced it on Thursday.

The court has ordered the CBI to file the FIR against former Chief Secretaries Vivek Dhand and Sunil Kujur, former ACS M.K. Raut, Alok Shukla, B.L. Agrawal,  Satish Pandey, P. Soti, Shri Rajesh Tiwari,  Ashok Tiwari, Herman Khalkho, M.L. Pandey and Pankaj Verma.

The bench observed that accused persons had formed a society by the name State Resource Center based in Mana and Physical Referral Rehabilitation Centre (PRRC) for the welfare of disabled individuals, but actually it existed only on papers.

“Despite the Bank Accounts of the employees throughout the State having been linked through their respective Aadhar Cards, such fake employees are shown to be paid in cash, only on papers in a planned and organized manner just to siphon hundreds of crores of rupees,” the court said.

The court further stated that the CBI shall register an FIR within a period of one week from Thursday and shall seize the relevant original records from the concerned department, organisation, and offices throughout the state within 15 days from the date of registration of FIR.

“CBI Investigation directed for alleged misappropriation and siphoning of more than Rs.1,000/- (Rupees One Thousand Crores) in State Resource Centre (SRC) and the Physical Referral Rehabilitation Centre (for brevity ‘the PRRC’) of the State Government for the last about 10 years,” the court observed.