Court yet to accept closure report against Khemka

After the police filed a closure report against former IAS officer Ashok Khemka in a case of cheating and corruption, an advocate, Ravinder Kumar, has filed an application for the transfer of the case to a competent court, which can hear a matter related to the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Claiming to be the original complainant in the case against Khemka, he submitted before CJM Aparna Bharadwaj that the closure report was filed as ex post facto approval under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act was not granted.

The report was full of contradictions, as on the one side, it spoke about decline of sanction under Section 17A and on the other, it was silent on the said section with respect to other co-accused employees whose sanctioning authority is the Managing Director, Haryana State Warehousing Corporation (HSWC), who himself was the complainant in the instant matter.

He further submitted it was needless to point out that these criminal proceedings were connected with the PC Act, 1988, read with Section 420, IPC, and the “CJM court is completely barred to deal with the PC Act, since this jurisdiction is entrusted exclusively to a Special Court presided over by an Additional Sessions Judge”.

He said the CJM was regularly hearing the matter connected to the PC Act for the last five months and even got recorded statements of Vaneet Chawla, former secretary, and Manoj Kumar, secretary on behalf of the Managing Director, HSWC, against provisions of law as they could not claim themselves as authorised complainants, instead it was the then MD, HSWC, Sanjeev Verma (now Ambala Divisional Commissioner), who got the complaint lodged with the police.

After Kumar's application, the CJM’s court, in its order on November 17, has fixed February 6 for reply.

Section 17A says that no police officer shall conduct any enquiry or inquiry or investigation into any offence alleged to have been committed by a public servant under the Act, without the previous approval. The matter pertained to 2022. Verma was posted as MD, HSWC. After finding certain appointments made in 2009 illegal, he complained to the Chief Secretary and wrote to the police to register a case against Khemka.

On April 26, 2022, the police registered FIR No. 170 at Sector 5 police station of Panchkula against Khemka for the alleged fraud in recruitment.

However, another FIR No. 171 was registered on the same day against Verma on the complaint of Khemka for alleged tampering with documents. The FIR against Verma was registered when the then Home Minister Anil Vij ordered it, while accompanying Khemka to the Panchkula DCP’s office. Later, the PC Act was added against Verma too.