A. GANESH REDDY Vs. C.B.I., SPEDEHRADUN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD Mr. S.K. Agarwal, the learned Senior Advocate assisted by Mr. Virendra Rawat and Mr. N.S. Pundir, Advocates for the applicant and Shri Arvind Vashistha, Advocate for the Respondent C.B.I.

(2.) THE applicant is the Vice President of M/s Patel Engineering Limited which is a construction company for construction of civil engineering projects. The F.I.R. dated 13th October, 2010 was lodged against S.K. Sharma, Zonal Manager, NPCC, J.K. Sinha, General Manager, NPCC, S.K. Sinha, Chaitanya Projects Consultants Pvt. Ltd., M.V. Rao, Director CEC Projects, Naveen Chandra Bhatt, Vidyut Roy, Mrigendra Gosh and against unknown persons. The F.I.R. alleges that National Projects Construction Corporation Ltd. (NPCC for short) was entrusted the work of construction of road at Leh in the State of Jammu and Kashmir by the Ministry of Home Affairs. This NPCC is a Govt. of India undertaking. Subsequently, NPCC gave an award worth about rupees 200 crores to M/s Patel Engineering Ltd. The F.I.R. alleges that M/s Patel Engineering Ltd. instead of carrying out the work themselves sublet the same by executing another agreement to M/s CEC Projects Pvt. Ltd. whose director is Shri M.V. Rao and who is alleged to be close with J.K. Sinha, General Manager of NPCC. The brother of J.K. Sinha, namely, S.K. Sinha is running a company named as Chaitanya Projects Consultants Pvt. Ltd. It is alleged that J.K. Sinha abused his official position as the General Manager of NPCC and despite orders of the Chairman -cum -Managing Director not to release any amount to Patel Engineering released a mobilized advance of Rs. 16.71 crores in favor of M/s Patel Engineering which was subsequently transferred to M/s CEC Projects. The Director, Mr. M.V. Rao of this CEC Projects has withdrawn the amount and has used a portion of it to bribe Shri J.K. Sinha, General Manager of NPCC. The brother of J.K. Sinha, namely, S.K. Sinha and his employee Naveen Chandra Bhatt were directed to deliver the bribe amount to Shri S.K. Sharma, Zonal Manager at NPCC and were caught red handed. On this basis, the F.I.R. was lodged.

(3.) DURING the course of investigation, basically a charge of criminal conspiracy has been alleged by the C.B.I. in paragraph 31 of their counter affidavit against the applicant. According to the CBI, during the course of the investigation, it was found that M/s Patel Engineering Ltd. had sublet the contract to M/S CEC Projects Ltd. and that B.S. Reddy, President of M/s Patel Engineering had entered into two agreements with CEC wherein it was agreed that M/s Patel Engineering would get the four percent of the contract value. According to the C.B.I., the criminal conspiracy is apparent since the principal agreement between the NPCC and M/s Patel Engineering was that there would be no subletting of the work granted to M/s Patel Engineering. The conspiracy was also writ large by the fact that the agreements executed with CEC indicated that the agreement will not be disclosed to NPCC.