Ved Parkash vs C.B.I.

P.K. Bhasin, J.—The appellant-accused was convicted by the Court of Special Judge, constituted to try cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act, vide judgment dated 22nd November, 1999 for the commission of the offences punishable under Sections 409/467/471 of the Indian Penal Code (''IPC'' for short) and Section 5(1)(c) & (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947(''the Act of 1947'' in short). Vide order dated 25th November, 1999 of the learned Special Judge the appellant had been awarded rigorous imprisonment of three years and fine of Rs. 5000/- for the conviction of the appellant-accused u/s 409 IPC, two years R.I. and fine of Rs. 2500/- for the conviction u/s 467 IPC, one year R.I. and fine of Rs. 2500/- for his conviction u/s 5(1)(c) of the Act of 1947 and one year R.I. with fine of Rs. 2500/- u/s 5(1)(d) of the Act of 1947. In case of non-payment of fines imposed the appellant-accused was to undergo further periods of rigorous imprisonment. The substantive sentences of imprisonment were, however, ordered to run concurrently. Feeling aggrieved, the appellant-accused filed the present appeal. The back-ground facts leading to the trial of the appellant-accused (hereinafter to be referred to as ''the accused''), as noticed by the learned Special Judge in the impugned judgment, are re-produced below:-

The present case was registered on the complaint of Shri B. Raghupathy, Chief Engineer, P.W.D., Delhi Administration, Zone-II, New Delhi alleging that accused Ved Prakash while functioning as a Cashier during September, 1988 had gone to State Bank of India, Tis Hazari with the Govt. cheques for encashment but had not reported for duty and it was apprehended that he had misappropriated huge amounts.

It is also alleged that 3 bills No. 191, 196 and 203 of LTC advances have been prepared and presented to the Pay and Accounts Officer No. XII, Delhi Administration by the accused without any authorization and signatures of Sanctioning Authority appeared to have been forged. It was also apprehended that the money drawn against these bills had been misappropriated by accused Ved Prakash, Cashier.

Further, it is alleged that Ved Parkash prepared sanction order no. 82/54/83- 2/2/1468-74 dated 30.8.88 in respect of L.T.C. advance of Rs. 8,000/- to Shri Som Parkash, Architect and forged the signatures of Shri H.C. Verma, Engineer officer on the same. He also forged the signature of Shri R.C. Nayak, Section Officer dated 30.8.88 on the carbon copy of the above sanction order. He prepared bill no. 191 dated 30.8.88 on the basis of aforesaid forged sanction order and made entry of this bill in bill register at Sr. No. 191 dated 30.8.88. He also made an entry of this bill in Pay Bill Register on page no. 47, which was destroyed later on. He got this bill and Pay Bill Registers signed by Shri S.K. Luthra, Section Officer on 31.8.88 and collected cheque no. 097965 dated 31.8.88 of Rs. 8,000/- of this bill from Pay & Accounts Officer, Delhi Administration PAO No. XII, on the same day, he showed it disbursed to Sh. Som Parkash and made the entry in cash book at page 42, which was also initialed by Shri S.K. Luthra, Section Officer. As a matter of fact, no such amount was ever paid to the said Shri Som Parkash.

Further it is stated that Shri Ved Parkash prepared sanction order No. 32/82/DAZ-II/2/2/1485-89 dated 31.8.88 in respect of L.T.C. advance of Rs. 6950/- favouring Shri K.S. Verma, Architectural Assistant and forged the signatures of Sh. H.C. Verma, Engineer Officer on it. He forged the signatures of Shri R.C. Nayak, Section Officer dated 31.8.88 on the carbon copy of the said sanction or doer. He further prepared bill no. 196 dated 1.9.88 on the basis of above said forged sanction order and entered the same in Bill register at S. No. 106 dated 1.9.88 and in Pay Bill Register at page 17 and got them signed by Sh. S.K. Luthra, Section Officer. He disfigured the entry in Pay Bill Register later on. Sh. Balak Ram, Daftry collected cheque no. 097978 dated 2nd September, 1988 for Rs. 8640/- which included the amount of the aforesaid bill and handed over the same to accused Shri Ved Parkash. Accused Ved Parkash made entry in cash book on page 43 and got this entry as well as the above cheque signed by Sh. H.P. Singh, Section Officer and got the above cheque encashed from the bank on 5.9.88. Accused Ved Parkash showed Rs. 6950/- as disbursed in cash book to Sh. K.S. Verma, Architectured Assistant on 2.9.88 which was also initiated by Shri H.P. Singh.

It is further alleged that accused Ved Parkash prepared sanction order no. 32/(33)/87/2/1512-16 dated 6.9.88 towards LTC advance of Rs. 6500/- favouring Sh. Radha Kishan, Assistant Architect and forged the signature of Sh. H.C. Verma, Engineer Officer on it. He forged the signatures of Sh. R.C. Nayak, Section Officer dated 6.9.88 on the carbon copy of the above sanction order. Accused Ved Parkash prepared Bill No. 203 dated 8.9.88 on the basis of the aforesaid forged sanction order. He made entry of this bill in Pay Bill Register at page 79 and got these entries and the bill signed by Sh. H.P. Singh, Section Officer. He collected cheque no. 098005 dated 9.9.88 of Rs. 6500/- of this bill from Pay & Accounts Officer, Delhi Administration PAO No. XII. He forged the signature of Sh. H.P. Singh, Section Officer on the back of this cheque and got it encashed from State Bank of India, Tis Hazari Court on 9.9.88. This amount neither was entered in the cash book nor was paid to Shri Radha Kishan. Thus, said accused Ved Parkash misappropriated a total sum of Rs. 20,450/- by forging the relevant record.

These allegations were investigated by the CBI and upon completion of investigation it filed a charge sheet in Court against the accused for the commission of the offences noted already and for which he was finally convicted also. In addition to those offences he was also charge-sheeted for the offence punishable u/s 477-A IPC but he was acquitted of that offence.

In order to establish the allegations against the accused the CBI had examined amongst many others the three officials in whose names the accused had allegedly prepared the applications for grant of Leave Travel Concession (LTC) advances, the officials whose signatures purported to appear on the sanction orders in respect of those three officials.

The accused had pleaded false implication at the time of recording of his statement u/s 313 Cr.P.C. for the reason that some of his senior officers in CPWD were not happy with him and they had links with CBI officials as they were maintaining the houses of CBI officials and their collusion was evident from the fact that the complaint against him was lodged directly with the CBI and not with the local police. The accused had examined one witness also in defence.

From the evidence adduced by the CBI during the trial and the statement made by the accused u/s 313 Cr.P.C. I find, and as has been observed by the learned Special Judge also in the impugned judgment, that the accused had admitted that he was entrusted with two cheques dated 31st August, 1988 (Ex. PW-7/A) for Rs. 8,000/- and 9th September, 1988 (Ex. PW-6/E) for Rs. 6,500/- for encashment from the State Bank of India where the Government had the account. The amount of those three cheques included the amount which was allegedly shown by the accused in the forged records as LTC advance payable to PWs 1 and 4. In the forged sanction orders a sum of Rs. 8,000/- was shown payable as advance to PW-1 Som Parkash, Rs. 5950/- was shown payable to PW-4 Radha Krishan and Rs. 6,500/- to PW-5 K.S. Verma. All three of them, however, as per the prosecution case, had never applied for any LTC advance and this they categorically stated to be so during their depositions before the trial Court. The accused had also admitted that he had got two cheques of Rs. 8000/- and Rs. 6500/- encashed from the bank while the third cheque of Rs. 8640/- was encashed by another official PW-12 Ghana Nand who had, however, handed over the money to him (the accused) and he in turn gave the money to PW-9 S.K. Luthra, Section Officer while the amounts of Rs. 8000/- and Rs. 6500/- were given by him to PW-6 Har Partap Singh. The case of CBI was that he had misappropriated that amount while his defence was that he had handed over the amount of two cheques to PW-6 who during the year 1988 was working as Section Officer/DDO in the B & C Section in the office of the Chief Engineer, CPWD and under whom the accused was working and the amount of third cheque to PW-9. That part of his defence had been rejected by the trial Court for the reason that when PW-6 Har Partap Singh and PW-9 S.K. Luthra, who was also the DDO, had appeared in the witness box as prosecution witnesses it was not even put to them in cross-examination on behalf of the accused that the money had been given to them as claimed by him during his statement u/s 313 Cr.P.C. This factual position was not disputed before this Court by the learned counsel for the accused and I have also found that position to be correct after going through the cross-examination of PWs 6 and 9. Therefore, it stood established, and rightly held to be so even by the learned Special Judge, that the money which the accused had collected from the bank and received from PW-12 Ghana Nand had been misappropriated by him.

Another reason given by the learned trial Judge for this conclusion, and very rightly, was that when the embezzled amount had been deducted from the salary of the accused, which fact the accused himself had also admitted, he had not even protested against the deductions from his salary which he would have definitely done if actually was innocent and had done nothing wrong. Learned counsel for the accused had nothing to say in respect of this reason given by the learned trial Judge.

The accused had also admitted during his statement under 313 Cr.P.C. that he had shown the amounts of LTC advance payable to PWs 1, 4 and 5 in the relevant cash registers as having been disbursed to them. He, however, did not claim that he himself had disbursed the money to these three officials, who as noticed already, had claimed that they had neither applied for LTC advance nor had they received any such advance. It was not put to them also in cross-examination that they had received the money from him. His plea was that he had made entries in the cash registers to the effect that the LTC advance had been disbursed to the concerned officials after receiving duplicate bills bearing the signatures of the recipients of the money under the bona fide belief that the money had been received by the concerned persons. So, despite the fact that the accused himself had not disbursed the money to PWs 1, 4 and 5 he made entries about payments to them in the cash registers without verifying from any official who had made those payments, if at all someone had made the payments and he himself had not pocketed the money. That is also a strong circumstance suggesting that the accused had pocketed the money which he had received for being disbursed to the PWs 1, 4 and 5. He also made false entries showing payments to these persons in the cash registers.

The accused had also admitted that he had prepared the bills showing that PWs 1, 4 and 5 had applied for LTC advance. Those bills were prepared by him, as per his defence, on the basis of sanction orders of the competent authorities given to him by PW-6. However, the officials whose signatures purported to appear on the sanction orders when appeared in the witness box denied that they had signed those sanction orders. The CBI had obtained their specimen signatures during investigation as also of the accused and were sent alongwith the questioned signatures on the sanction orders for handwriting expert''s opinion and as per the expert''s report (Ex. PW-20/D) the signatures of the sanctioning officers appeared to be in the handwriting of the accused. No argument was made before me by the counsel for the accused to show that expert''s report was not trustworthy. The plea taken by the accused during his statement u/s 313 Cr.P.C. was that the sanction orders were given to him by PW-6 and then he had prepared the bills. However, this defence was also not put to PW-6 in cross-examination. Thus, it also stood established that the accused had forged sanction orders Ex. PW-8/A for Rs. 8,000/-, Ex. PW-8/C for Rs. 5950/- and Ex. PW-8/D for Rs. 6500/- and also prepared false bills.

The defence witness examined by the accused had deposed that the accused was not on good terms with PW-6 Har Partrap Singh and for that reason false case was registered against the accused. However, since it had been established by the prosecution that the accused had actually pocketed the public money his strained relations with PW-6 will not be a good ground to presume that he had got a false case registered against the accused.

Learned counsel for the accused had made a submission that the charges were framed against the accused under the Act of 1947 while the offences are allegedly committed by him on 13th September, 1988 by which time the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988 had come into force and so the trial in entirety was illegal. There is no merit in this argument. The accused had received the amounts of the three cheques in question before the said Act of 1988 had come into force and since he had not deposited that money in his department the offence of misappropriation stood committed by him on the dates when he received the money and forgery of documents was even before that. So, the trial of the accused for the offences under the old Act of 1947 cannot be said to be vitiated.

It was also submitted by the counsel for the accused that the department had since recovered the embezzled amount the case against the accused gets diluted. There is no merit in this submission also. Even if he himself had returned the amount earlier pocketed by him before detection of his acts that would not have made any difference. In case this kind of submissions are accepted then every corrupt public servant on being caught would be too willing to return the misappropriated money to seek exoneration. This appeal is without any merit and the impugned judgment of the trial Court cannot be faulted for any reason. Therefore, this appeal is dismissed.