Written by: Swati Mahajan
2 min readChandigarhMay 8, 2016 08:07 AM IST
First published on: May 8, 2016 at 08:07 AM IST
IN A major setback for the ongoing disproportionate assets trial of Col (Retd) B S Guraya, a bank manager on Saturday told the CBI Special Court that evidence pertaining to the case was no longer preserved with the bank. In another revelation, he said that as per the bank records, the account was never frozen by the CBI.
The reason for inability to preserve the evidence was stated as unavailability of computers when the case was registered in 1989.
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The witness, Paramjit Singh, 57, manager of Canara Bank, Amritsar, deposed before the CBI Special Court of Shashibala Chauhan. He stated that the record was not available in the branch as it pertained to 1986. At that time, there was no computerised system and the accounts used to be handled manually.
Deposing before the court, Singh said, “As per banking rules, the record used to be destroyed after every 10 years. In case the record pertains to 1986 of any account, then the same is to be destroyed after 10 years, i.e. 1996. The record pertaining to 1986 has not been generated in the computerised system, which started in 1996-1997.”
Singh added that as per the records brought by him, this account was never frozen by the CBI.
Col Guraya, a resident of Sector 9, was booked in a disproportionate assets case. The agricultural land of the Army personnel was attached by the CBI during the investigation of a corruption case against him. He reportedly sold his attached agricultural land to some persons in Hoshiarpur. The CBI had booked him under sections 13(2) and 13(1) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
The investigating agency had concluded in its report that from January 1987 to August 1990, Col Guraya and some others had allegedly bought properties amounting to Rs 82.58 lakh.
However, Col Guraya had managed to get a stay on the court proceedings from the apex court. The stay was vacated in 2011.
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