Close on the heels of disclosure of transfer of huge Government land on basis of forged documents in Rampur District, yet another case came to notice in Sonbhadra district, where a senior IAS officer and three others have been booked for allegedly transferring Indian Railways’ land to a private company using fake documents.
According to reports from Sonbhadra, a case was filed against former District Magistrate Pandhari Yadav, senior divisional engineer in Railways, Santosh Gupta, PWD executive engineer, ID Ram and a senior functionary of the private firm, at Robertsganj Kotwali on Wednesday night. Move to initiate legal proceedings against one of the senior IAS officer — known to be very close the State Government had been made on direction of the court.
Reports said that advocate Vijay Prakash Malviya, had moved the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court on December 22, 2012 alleging that the above four accused had got the Railways’ land transferred to the company in 2012 for personal use with the help of fake documents. CJM Vijay Chand Yadav had on February 2, 2015 directed the local police to register the case against them. However, the local police delayed the proceedings but after the orders were served to local police station on Wednesday, the cops went ahead to register a case.
It may be mentioned that over 100-years old widow of an army martyr recently exposed misuse of government land allotted in the name of retired army personnel quota. The matter came to the fore during an enquiry by Information Commissioner (SIC), Hafiz Usman. The accused, who forged service certificate had grabbed 25 acres of land reportedly with the help of officials of district Rampur collectrate. The accused is illegally occupying the land now for almost five decades and had also taken huge loans against the land with the help of local officials.
Surprisingly, even after the forgery was exposed, the officials took no cognisance in the matter. Now, Usman, directed divisional commissioner of Meerut, to probe the entire matter and initiate legal proceedings not just against the accused, but also against the officials of Rampur Collectrate who connived to facilitate illegal allotment and later also closed their eyes towards the forgery.