The Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) court rejected the bail petitions of nine accused in connection with the recruitment scam (2007-08) at Bokaro Steel limited (BSl), a subsidiary of the Steel Authority of India limited (SAIl), on Friday.
The CBI court’s Special Justice S K Pandey rejected the bail petitions of Syed Md Razi, son of Syed Sibtey Razi, ex-Governor of Jharkhand, and Raj Kumar Jatia, son of Satyanarayan Jatia, a senior BJP leader of MP, and YC Patnayak, son of retired judge of Jharkhand High court GDR Patnayak.
Besides these three, the court also rejected the bail petitions of Ritesh Singh, son of ex-MD BSl BK Singh, OP Gupta (then DGM - project), AS Hembram (then AGM P&A), R Pandita (then Junior Manager posted at Delhi), K Rajshekheran (then DGM personnel), Arvind Prasad (then DGM personnel).
Earlier in January this year the CBI had filed a chargesheet against its 13 officials in a Dhanbad court in connection with the recruitment scam at BSl. With the charges of cheating, forgery, corruption and criminal conspiracy CBI filed the charges against the 13 the included then Managing Director of BSl B K Srivastava, then Executive Director BSl Jeevesh Mishra, General Manager Om Prakash Gupta, GM R K Narula and Deputy General Manager AS Hembrom, CBI officials said.
Officials said, in recruitment at BSl in 2007-08 several ineligible candidates were appointed for the posts of middle and junior management levels in BSl under political pressure having their VVIP links.
In a bid to favour these people BSl SAIl management violated the selection procedures; applications (for recruitments) were called through an advertisement in a Mumbai-based newspaper and applicants were asked to send the filled up form and testimonials at an address, which was an incomplete address, CBI official informed.
Investigations revealed that several people related to politicians, judges and even one Governor were favoured for jobs by the officers. Syed Md Razi, son of Syed Sibtey Razi, ex-Governor of Jharkhand, and Raj Kumar Jatia, son of Satyanarayan Jatia, senior BJP leader of MP, got job at BSl on the basis of forged certificates, officials said.
“Razi submitted an experience certificate of working as Senior Manager at New Delhi based M/s Adhunik Aircon since the year 2004 while Raj Kumar Jatia furnished an experience certificate of Marketing Officer at M/s Kashyap Sweetners limited, both found false during our investigation”, added the official.
While Yogesh Chandra Patnayak (son of retired High Court justice DGR Patnayak) was found having secured two degrees in the same time period of 1998-2001 as a regular student of Dhanbad law College and Jaipur based Maharshi Arvind Institute of Science and Management, the official said, adding, “several irregularities were also found with Ritesh Kumar Singh, son of ex-MD Bokaro B K Singh”.
It’s found that the above four were mailed their application with the private courier instead of mailing with the registered post and their written examinations were taken in a Five Star Hotel instead of SAIl headquarter, official said adding “ their applications also found without the applicant’s signature”.
Notably, on the complaint of a Patna based scribe Akhilesh Kumar the first case was registered against then managing director VK Shrivastava and 14 officials, both working and retired, at BSl while the second case is against then executive director and seven other working and retired officials of SAIl and the plant alleging favouring candidates having VVIP connections.
On 28 January 36 teams of CBI sleuths conducted extensive raids across the country including Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Mumbai and Delhi to unearth the scam.
On 22 February 2014 20 officials were sacked in connection with this recruitment scam were Syed Md Razi, Raj Kumar Jatia, Ritesh Kumar Singh, Yogesh Chandra Patnayak, S S Vora, R Kumar, MK Singh, MS Rajak, MK Gope, AK Paswan, SK Mishra, HS Kumar, AK Srivastava, lN Singh, S Kumar, B Sahani, P Kumar, R Kumar posted at Bokaro Steel Plant, Bokaro. All were ineligible candidates and selected for the posts of middle and junior management levels in BSl.