SOMA CHAKRAVARTY Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The two petitions assails the order of the Special Judge, Delhi in case CC No.63/2001 titled CBI vs. Priya Uppal & Ors. in which the present petitioners have been charged for offences under Section 420 read with Section 120-B, 419, 429, 467, 468 & 471 of Indian Penal Code (in short `IPC') as well as under various provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act (in short `PC Act'). The present petitioners " accused in the case " were employees of India Trade Promotion Organization (in short `ITPO'). The two petitioners along with the other accused in this case allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy and by misusing their official position caused undue pecuniary advantage to themselves to the tune of Rs.30,30,057/- and caused a corresponding loss to ITPO from whose account money was released against bogus receipts of advertisement which had actually never been carried by any newspaper or other publication.

(2.) The story of the prosecution is that the publicity department of ITPO was concerned with the release of advertisement in the newspapers. There were two types of advertisements; (1) regular advertisement & (2) ad hoc advertisements. Regular advertisements were given to the national dailies and other leading newspapers and magazines whereas ad hoc advertisements were those which were issued on ad hoc basis from time to time with the specific approval of Chief Managing Director or Executive Director only. The procedure for release of advertisement on behalf of ITPO was as follows:

(3.) The investigation claims that at the relevant time Shri Bal Krishan, Deputy Manager was incharge of the work relating to ad hoc advertisements. He was the authorised officer to process the bill for such advertisements. Shri Ajay Uppal, Proof Reader/Senior Assistant of ITPO floated 6 bogus firms and submitted 76 bogus bills worth Rs.30,30,057/- for payment by signing under the fictitious names like, Sanjay Gupta, Neeraj, Atul, etc. With his bills he enclosed photocopies of fake advertisements. Out of 76 bogus bills, 14 were dishonestly processed and verified by the present petitioners, Soma Chakravarty & P.K.Jindal, in connivance with co-accused to cheat the ITPO and wrongful gain to themselves and to the other accused in this case. It is stated that Soma Chakravarty was never authorised to process those bills. She also had the knowledge that Bal Krishan had been authroised to verify the bills pertaining to ad hoc advertisements. Incidentally all the bogus vouchers had been filled in by the co-accused Gyase Ram who was neither posted in the Publicity Division nor was authorised to do so. Further she knew that those bogus bills had not been entered in the bills register of the Publicity Division of ITPO and no file had been opened/created in respect of these firms claiming to have published advertisements. The file numbers written on the fictitious bills were also fake. None of these bills bore initial or signatures of Shri Bal Krishan, who was incharge of the ad hoc advertisements of ITPO at the relevant time. As regards the other petitioner, P.K.Jindal, is concerned, the allegation is that he as Senior Manager of Accounts passed bills worth Rs.1,75,000/- related to these transactions. On these facts, the CBI concluded that there was sufficient evidence of conspiracy to cheat along with the other evidence of forgery, cheating and corruption. Accordingly a charge sheet was filed. The trial court after examining the allegations and evidence collected by the investigation framed the impugned charges against the petitioners, Ms.Soma Chakravarty & Mr.P.K.Jindal.