Whistleblower claims perjury, concealment of documents

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 19

Nearly seven years after the President revoked the charge sheet against whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi, the Magsaysay awardee Indian Forest Service officer has alleged that he was made to suffer for defending and exposing scams and misdeeds of corrupt officers and politicians.

In an application filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chaturvedi named former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, then ministers Kiran Choudhry and Capt Ajay Yadav, and IAS officer Keshni Anand Arora.

Chaturvedi also alleged that certain acts of perjury and concealment of documents in the matter were meant to somehow pre-empt an impending CBI investigation into corrupt activities.

The application was filed in connection with a petition by Haryana for quashing the President’s orders and a Central government panel’s recommendations for a CBI probe into alleged scams exposed by Chaturvedi. It was scheduled to come up for hearing before Justice PB Bajanthri’s Bench tomorrow.

Haryana had all along been contending that the Ministry of Environment and Forests had illegally constituted a committee, which gave a clean chit to Chaturvedi while indicting state government officials.

Haryana had also claimed that the committee had submitted a report casting aspersions on its officials without giving it an opportunity of hearing. The state had added that the Central government orders were unconstitutional and violated the principles of natural justice.

Chaturvedi added that the entire petition was based on false statements and concealment of documents vital to the case. The foundation of the entire petition was “so-called violation of principle of natural justice”, with the petitioners repeatedly claiming that they were not given an opportunity to put their version before the Central government.

He added that the inquiry committee had sent five letters to the petitioner-state for submitting information, documents and records it deemed fit. Finally, the state government had submitted its reply and its response was examined in detail.

“Thus, the entire foundation of the writ petition is based on offence of perjury, for which exemplary punishment needs to be inflicted. The offence becomes graver in view of the facts that the same have been committed by the state, which is supposed to be upholder and custodian of the rule of law,” he pointed out.

Chaturvedi sought initiation of criminal proceedings against the petitioners and “their accomplices” for perjury and other offences, besides initiation of criminal proceedings against petitioners for offence under provisions of the Official Secret Act for filing “highly confidential documents of communication related to Prime Minister’s Office and Central Vigilance Commission”.