CBI closure report rejected, yet again

Chandigarh, January 6

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The CBI suffered a major setback when a special CBI court here on Friday rejected the agency’s plea for closure report in the multi-crore amusement-cum-theme park project case.

This is for the third time that the court has rejected the closure report. It also summoned all the accused in the case, including the then UT Adviser Lalit Sharma, the then Home Secretary Krishan Mohan, the then Director Tourism Vivek Atray and Director of Unitech Ltd Ajay Chandra, involved in the Rs 1400-crore project scam on January 20.

In his statement before the court, the complainant, Vivek Aditya, stated that he was not satisfied with the investigation and any of the closure reports filed by the CBI. He also submitted photocopies of the documents containing 70 pages related to the arbitration proceedings initiated by M/s Unitech Ltd against the Chandigarh Administration and claimed Rs 95 crore with respect to the project, which was launched in 2006.

The case was registered against the accused under Sections 120-B, 420 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13(1)d and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. On the basis of an investigation conducted by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) in 2008 in connection with the matter related to 73.65 acres for the theme-cum-amusement park, they were booked for corruption, abuse of power and criminal conspiracy for their involvement in the multi-crore scam. However, in all three closure reports, the CBI gave a clean chit to the three former senior officials of the UT Administration.

The theme park project was the first of the four controversial mega projects, the others being Filmcity, Medicity and Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park, Phase III, which ran into rough weather.

Based on the probes conducted by the CVC and the Ministry of Home Affairs, the CBI had registered a criminal case against the then top bureaucrats of Chandigarh.

Soon after the registration of the case, the project was scrapped by the UT Administration, following which the dispute between Unitech Ltd

and the Chandigarh Administration flared

up and reached the Punjab and Haryana High Court. — TNS