Complainant files protest petition in herb scam

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, August 10

The complainant in the multi-crore herb scam in the Punjab Ayurvedic Department that made headlines in 2011 has filed a protest petition in a local court challenging the application moved by the State Vigilance Bureau for quashing an FIR registered in the scam.

The Vigilance had registered the FIR after one and half years of investigations. Now just an year after the FIR, the Vigilance is seeking quashing of the same.

The complainant, Dr Shivraj Singh Kamboj, former Ayurvedic Medical Officer of the department, in his petition has claimed that, “During preliminary investigation and regular investigation after the registration of a case on several dates, he was questioned by the inquiry officer. He was convinced that many officers and officials were involved in the conspiracy of huge embezzlement. But officers of the Department of Ayurveda, Punjab, successfully misled the Vigilance Department, Punjab, with the help of reports of in-house committees by hand-picked officers from various offices of the Ayurveda Department, Punjab, who were directly or indirectly involved in this huge embezzlement of public funds but were shown as experts of such subjects, which in fact was in violation of the principles of natural process of justice and natural process of conducting of independent inquiry. It is not possible at all that officers of a particular office, who are involved in the embezzlement, will submit report against their own officers and officials. Thus, these reports are the result of a well calculated move to hush up embezzlement case of public funds.”

Therefore, he has moved the local court to protest the Vigilance’s Bureau plea for quashing the FIR registered in the scam.

It is worth mentioning that in 2013, Dr Shivraj Singh Kamboj filed a complaint with the Vigilance Department. The VB investigated the matter for one and a half years and registered a case after establishing that herbs were spurious and supplied at inflated prices.

The case was registered against four persons, including two employees of the Punjab Ayurveda Department and owners of the two firms that had supplied the order, under Sections 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, 511, 120B of the IPC and Sections of Prevention of Corruption Act. But, no arrests were made in the case.

The accused were identified as Senior Assistant Satish Kumar and Superintendent Bhupinder Singh of the Punjab Ayurvedic Department and Naurang Rai, owner of Nausheel Enterprises, Hisar, and owner of India Drug House, New Delhi.

However, early this year, the Vigilance constituted a SIT to further investigate the matter, which had members of the Ayurveda Department as many technical details were involved in the investigations. Based on their report, the Vigilance Bureau had submitted an application moved by the state vigilance bureau for quashing of an FIR.

Dr Shivraj has urged the court that keeping in view of the above said facts and observations of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Chandigarh, in the case, the Department of Vigilance, Punjab, might be directed to reinvestigate the matter.