I-T officer in jail for ‘non-existent’ case

‘‘The complainant (Avinash Chatterjee) just doesn’t exist,’’ says Inspector A Mohammad, SHO of Malviya Nagar police station. ‘‘We checked the address provided in court and every other aspect. We just couldn’t find him. As far as we are concerned, the entire case was fabricated.’’

Now the Rajasthan High Court is looking into how Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Ganesh Gupta took cognisance of the case, ignored factual discrepancies and ordered Income-Tax Commissioner A K Garg into prison for one night on the basis of it.

It all began with a four-line advertisement placed by ‘‘someone with no contact information’’ in a Hindi daily in May, saying A K Garg was looking for a young man to help him with some personal work.

Soon after a person calling himself Avinash Chatterjee complained that he had gone to Garg’s home on night of March 11 (two months before the advertisement came out) and found him drinking. The man said Garg tried to molest him and that he escaped with the help of another person living on the premises, who later signed as a witness on the court papers.

The statements of these two men were recorded on May 13 in courtroom 11 and a bailable warrant issued on May 20 against Garg. One of the aspects of this simple procedure that is now under the scanner of investigating officials is how the magistrate overlooked the fact that the complainant had approached them directly and not a police station first.

It was Garg who went to the cops. The investigators will also probe why the magistrate didn’t point out that Chatterjee complained of harassment in March when the ad came out in May.

On August 25, Gupta, who took over the case after his colleague Arun Chaudhary died in an accident, rejected Garg’s bail application and sent him to judicial custody. ‘‘It was for one night but it was frightening,’’ says the I-T Commissioner. ‘‘I will never forget that night.’’

While Garg was granted bail the next morning, the HC initiated an inquiry based on media reports. Police were also conducting investigations based on a complaint filed by Garg, who hinted that someone unhappy with his tenure as I-T Commissioner may be behind the charge.

But the cops ran into a wall. They found Chatterjee missing, the witness equally hard to trace and a prosecution lawyer who washed his hands of the matter. S K Nag, whose signature figures on Chatterjee’s case papers and who has been visited by HC officials, says: ‘‘I don’t know anything about it. Actually my bag was stolen from my chambers sometime back and maybe someone misused the papers inside.’’

Sitting in his simple living room and waiting for court orders to pack his bags and leave for Jabalpur on his next posting, Garg is reluctant to talk about a matter that is sub-judice. But it is clear he is relieved his name might be cleared after months of living the taint. ‘‘It just proves that with money anyone can do anything. I will be exonerated but the scar and the scare will always remain,’’ he says.