Central Agency to file ATR after every 8 weeks
CS, Div Coms, DCs asked to extend full cooperation
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Oct 9: In a landmark judgment, Division Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court comprising Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Rajesh Bindal has transferred the infamous multi-crore Roshni land scam involving several high-profile persons to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) with the direction to file Action Taken Report (ATR) after every eight weeks for monitoring by the High Court.
The judgment has been delivered in Civil Miscellaneous Application (CMA) No.48/2014 arising out of the Public Interest Litigation No.19/2011. On September 23, 2020, the Division Bench headed by Chief Justice had reserved the judgment after hearing in detail the arguments of Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed appearing for the PIL and Advocate Ankur Sharma for the CMA.
EXCELSIOR in its edition dated September 23, 2020 had exclusively reported that Division Bench, during the course of hearing, dropped sufficient hints about transferring the scam to the CBI keeping in view the failure of the Jammu and Kashmir Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to make any substantial progress despite lapse of several years.
Today, the Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Gita Mittal, in the open court held through virtual mode, read out the operative part of the judgement and said that infamous Roshni land scam has been entrusted to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation has been directed to constitute a team of officers headed by an officer not below the rank of Superintendent of Police. Moreover, the DB has directed the petitioners in PIL No.19/2011 Advocate Sheikh Shakeel Ahmed and CMA No.48/2014 Advocate Ankur Sharma to provide all material and information about the scam to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Moreover, the DB has directed the Chief Secretary of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Divisional Commissioner Jammu and all the Deputy Commissioners of 10 districts to render full assistance to the CBI and furnish all record during the investigation.
It has also been made clear by the Division Bench that any officer not extending necessary cooperation to the CBI in the investigation will be held guilty of contempt of court. The CBI has further been asked to examine all the files pertaining to the prosecution sanction and take further steps accordingly.
Looking into magnitude and seriousness of the scam, the Division Bench has further directed the CBI to file Action Taken Report (ATR) after every eight weeks for its monitoring by the High Court.
While transferring the scam to the Central Agency, the Division Bench also dealt with several applications including an application highlighting encroachment of 154 kanals of Jammu Development Authority (JDA) land at Deeli and also encroachments on 66,000 kanals of JDA land in Jammu and Samba districts and accordingly passed certain directions.
It is pertinent to mention here that on September 23, 2020, the DB had expressed serious concern over the slackness on the part of Anti-Corruption Bureau in investigating the scam, which caused loss of several thousand crores of rupees to the exchequer of Jammu and Kashmir.
The DB had also expressed anguish over slow pace of investigation in 10 out of 17 FIRs registered by the then State Vigilance Organization (presently Anti-Corruption Bureau). These FIRs are 8/2009 registered by Police Station Vigilance Organization Kashmir, 6/2014, 16/2014, 3/2015, 4/2015, 5/2015, 23/2015 registered by Police Station Vigilance Organization Jammu, 17/2014, 26/2015 and 18/2016 registered by Police Station Vigilance Organization Kashmir.
After going through status report dated September 9, 2020 filed by General Administration Department through Additional Advocate General Raman Sharma in pursuance to the orders dated August 11 and August 27, 2020 respectively mentioning the date-wise summary of three FIRs pending for grant of prosecution sanction, the DB had on September 23 further expressed displeasure over taking of 2 to 4 years for considering the prosecution sanction in the cases in which investigation was concluded several years back.
“It appears that those at the helm of affairs are not interested to ensure prosecution of the offenders”, the DB had stated, adding “like Patnitop violations this case merits to be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) so that entire Roshni land scam is completely unravelled”.
The Roshni land scam was unearthed by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India and on the intervention of Accountant General J&K some test checked cases were picked up in six districts namely Anantnag, Jammu, Udhampur, Pulwama, Srinagar and Budgam.
Today, Division Bench also directed that within four weeks, Secretary to the Government, Revenue Department will publish the names of the encroachers of 20 lakh kanals of State land in the entire Union Territory on the website for the public information.
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