TAPABRATA BANERJEE Vs. CENTRAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petition has been filed challenging the order dated 24.04.2012 passed by the learned Judge, 3rd Special Court, CBI, Kolkata in Special Case No. 38 of 2007 rejecting the prayer of the petitioner for discharge from the aforesaid case.

(2.) The prosecution case as alleged is that initially one R.C. Case No. 10 (E) of 2001 was registered at the office of S.P., EOW, Kolkata on 19.10.2001 on the basis of source information against B. N. Jalan, N.K. Jalan, Bhagwati Prasad Tribrewal, Sudipta Paul and other unknown persons under Section 120B read with Sections419/420/467/468/471 of I.P.C. and under Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of Prevention of Corruption Act and a charge sheet was filed against the aforesaid persons and others underthe aforesaid sections.

(3.) Subsequently, on 15.06.2005 a supplementary charge sheet was filed against the petitioner and one P.K. Agarwal and S.K.Mahapatra under Section 120B read with Sections 419/420/468/471 I.P.C.read with Section 109 I.P.C. and Section 13(1)(d) read with Section 13(2) of Prevention of Corruption Act alleging that the petitioner entered into a criminal conspiracy with other accused persons and in pursuance to such conspiracy, the petitioner as examiner verified 15 forged DEPB licences and also endorsed the forged licence numbers by overwriting/erasing earlier DEPB licence numbers in DEPB noting register maintained and kept in his custody and also failed to perform his duty of verifying export promotion (EP) copy of shipping bills as the same were not produced by the companies during verification. The petitioner also did not verify the particulars of the shipping bills from the data available in the DEPB noting register and also did not verify the bills of lading/mate receipt in order to satisfy himself that goods covered under the shipping bills had been shipped/dispatched and also did not check the correctness of the credit permitted for DEPB prior to endorsement for perusal and clearance by the appraisers. He intentionally ignored the DEPB licence numbers written in the appropriate column in the DEPB noting register and overwrote/distorted the said numbers in the register to accommodate the forged licence numbers in the same,causing loss of governmentrevenue to the tune ofrupees 3,49,30,882/- and extending wrongful gain to the concerned companies.