Ms. Soma Chakravarty vs State (Through Cbi)
2005 Latest Caselaw 1445 Del

JUDGMENT

Manju Goel, J.

1. The two petitions assails the order of the Special Judge, Delhi in case CC No. 63/2001 titled CBI v. Priya Uppal and Ors. in which the present petitioners have been charged for offences under Section 420 read with Section 120B, 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:

Requests were received from Indian and foreign magazines/newspapers/publications for the advertisements which were processed by the Publicity Officer of the rank of Deputy Manager levels and were put to CMD/ED through Senior Manager/Deputy General Manager for his approval. On receipt of approval from CMD/Executive Director by the Publicity Division, the concerned manager sent letters/release orders to the party for publication of material. After advertisements were published the concerned officer of Publicity Division verified the bills and forwarded the same to the Finance Division of ITPO along with a copy of CMD/ED's approval for making payment to the advertising agency. Copy of the letter sent to the agency by the ITPO for publishing the advertisement and copy of the newspaper/magazine was also forwarded or attached to the bill submitted by the agency.

3. The investigation claims that at the relevant time Shri Bal Krishan, Deputy Manager was in charge 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 in charge 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.

4. On behalf of the petitioners it is contended that there was no material before the Special Judge to substantiate the allegations against the petitioners. It is submitted on behalf of Soma Chakravarty that she did nothing more than only processing some of those 14 bills and sending them to accounts division of ITPO from where the payments had been collected by cheques. The petitioner (Soma Chakravarty), it is submitted, was working as Deputy Manager in the publicity division and had initialled 13 bills and sanction forms after they had been processed by Gyase Ram and all the 13 bills contained the signatures of Gyase Ram when they were put up before her for her signature. She contends that she had signed those bills in the normal course of her duties and the bills were passed by the accounts section. She attributes lack of vigilance to the account section which was required to verify those bills with reference to the sanction for the advertisement. She claims that Bal Krishan, the officer authorised to deal with the ad hoc advertisement, was himself a beneficiary of part of the alleged money cheated out of ITPO. It is claimed on behalf of the petitioner Soma Chakravarty that the investigation has failed to reveal any means read on her part. She says that she got involved only because of her failure to take sufficient care while initialling the bills in question. Nonetheless she also says that it was not possible for her to detect at the time of initialling the bills that any fraud was being played on her by co-accused Gyase Ram and others. Accordingly, she seeks to be discharged from the case. Similarly, the other petitioner, P.K.Jindal, also denies any involvement in the offence and says that there is hardly any allegation against him in the charge sheet.

5. The CBI counsel, Shri R.M.Tewari, has taken me through the trial court record and has shown the evidence collected by the CBI in the matter and particularly those documents which indicate a prima facie case against the two petitioners. I have also heard Mr.A.K.Ganguly, Senior Advocate and Mr.V.Shekhar, Advocate who appeared for the two petitioners and made their best efforts to say that no means read of any kind and no prima facie case has been made out against the two petitioners.

6. In order to further proceed with the matter it will suffice to refer to a few documents on which strong reliance is placed by the CBI, viz., the letter of Shri R.K.Chopra, Senior Manager, written to Shri Ved Parkash, Inspector of Police, SPE/CBI/ACB/Delhi indicating that petitioner Soma Chakravarty was assigned the duties of processing regular advertisements and also processing of bills for the periods of 1994-95, 1995-96 and 1996-97 whereas for the same period the ad hoc advertisements were to be dealt by Shri Bal Krishan, Deputy Manager. The letter further says that on 10.1.1995 Shri Bal Krishan issued a note alerting the accounts department that no bill relating to advertisement should be passed unless the same had been verified by him. There are other documents indicating that Soma Chakaravarty was never assigned any duty in respect of processing or verifying the bills relating to ad hoc advertisements. Admittedly, she processed at least 6 out of 14 disputed bills but says that she did it under negligence but not with mala intentions. It is not the case of the petitioner, Soma Chakravarty, that she did not know or was unaware about the distribution of business between her and Bal Krishan. She, however, claims that the note of 10.1.1995 is a contrived document. Now, whether the document is a contrived document or not can be gone into only at the time of trial. At this stage this document as well as the other documents indicating distribution of work and unauthorised involvement of Soma Chakravarty in respect of these bills have to be taken on their face value. The fact that goes against Soma Chakravarty is her repeated involvement in processing such bills. It is not a one time mistake which can be ignored as a genuine one. The repeated involvement of the petitioner, Soma Chakravarty, along with sufficient evidence showing that she was not required to handle these bills and further the fact that Gyase Ram who had put up these bills before her was also not the right person to handle these bills raise a prima facie view of means rea.

7. It is further contended on her behalf that there is no evidence of conspiracy. As is commonly known, there can hardly be an occasion where direct evidence of conspiracy is available. Conspiracy, as it is said, is hatched in the dark and behind the curtains and, therefore, has to be inferred from all the attending circumstances of a case. The prosecution story reveals a racket involving more than 20 persons and, therefore, it cannot be said that there is no evidence of conspiracy. So far as P.K.Jindal is concerned, again it is pleaded that there was no means read on his part. This plea can be rejected without any waste of time. The CBI counsel has drawn my attention to various bills which were passed by P.K.Jindal even without their being any formal processing by anyone.

8. It is settled law that at the time of framing of charge the court is not required to make a roving enquiry into the pros and cons of the matter and weigh evidence as if it is conducting a trial. It is also well settled that where the material placed before the court discloses grave suspicion against the accused which has not been properly explained, the court will be fully justified in framing charge. (Union of India v. Prafulla Kumar, ).

9. Shri A.K.Ganguly, Senior Advocate, arguing for Soma Chakravarty refers to the two judgments of the Supreme Court, namely, L. Chandraiah v. State of A.P. and Anr.; 2003 (9) SCALE 537 and State of Maharashtra and Ors. v. Som Nath Thapa and Ors.; . The judgment in the first case is rendered in appeal. The accused therein was acquitted because means read could not proved. This is not applicable here when there is prima facie material on means read and the claim of the petitioners that it was only a case of negligence can be established only in trial. Her plea cannot be considered at this stage. So far as the second judgment is concerned, the same is squarely against the petitioners. It says that the court must apply its mind to the material placed on record and that the court must satisfy itself that the commission of offence by the accused is probable. On facts it was held that evidence of conscious possession of arms and ammunition had not been collected by the investigation and accordingly in that case accused had to be discharged of certain offences under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act.

10. The above discussion clearly shows that there is sufficient material on record for proceeding against the two petitioners. I do not think that the trial court has gone wrong in framing charge against the petitioners. I accordingly dismiss the two petitions.