Close on the heels of arrest of IAS officer Sachidanand Dubey, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday arrested Aligarh Development Authority Vice Chairman JB Singh in connection with the Rs 19 crore mid-day meal scam during his tenure as chief development officer of Mainpuri.
Another IAS officer, Shanker Chaturvedi, and a former basic shiksha adhikari, KDN Ram, along with two other accused involved in the scam have so far managed to evade arrest.
Reports said that an inspector of the CBI and a team of Kwarsi police station of Aligarh raided at the Avantika Colony residence of JB Singh on Wednesday morning and served on him a non-bailable warrant issued by the CBI Court.
He was immediately taken into custody by the CBI team and will now be presented before the CBI court in Ghaziabad. The arrest was made in connection with the scam that took place in the neighbouring Mainpuri district between 2008 and 2010 when Singh was posted there as the chief development officer.
The action was taken on the basis of an FIR filed in Mainpuri in April 2011, in which JB Singh along with 10 other senior district officials, including the then District Magistrate of Mainpuri Sachidanand Dubey, have been named.
Dubey and Singh are also said to be involved in a Rs 100 crore rupee fraud in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNAREGA) scheme.
However, Singh had so far not only managed to save his skin but also get plum postings due to his political connections. last Friday, the special CBI court had ordered seizure of the properties of former DM of Mainpuri, Sachidanand Dubey, former CDOs of Mainpuri, JB Singh and Shanker Chaturvedi and ex-BSA KDN Ram after they failed to appear in the court even after repeated summons.
The CBI had managed to arrest Dubey from his residence in lucknow on Saturday night. He was later taken to Ghaziabad and produced before the CBI judge on Sunday morning. The judge sent him to jail.
During the raid, the CBI had recovered Rs 51 lakh cash from Dubey’s residence, sources said. The court has already sent another former DM of Mainpuri, Dinesh Chandra Shukla, to jail in connection with the scam, which is being investigated by the CBI on the directives of the Allahabad High Court.
It may be mentioned here that in Balrampur district also, the district treasury officer had made an inquiry and found misappropriation of over Rs 20 crore. In two instances, he found that Rs 75 lakh had been shown as expenditure on printing of calendars while Rs 50 lakh had been shown as payment to a non-governmental organisation (NGO) towards release of advertisement but no record was found.
The treasury officer had sent a report to the state government several years back, holding the then DM Sachidanand Dubey, the then CDO, and other government officers responsible for the misappropriation of MNREGA fund and had recommended appropriate action but the letter was swept under the carpet.