Kickbacks case: 6 MC officials summoned

CHANDIGARH, March 30: The Engineering Department kickbacks case today came up in the court of UT District and Sessions Judge B. S. Bedi, ...

CHANDIGARH, March 30: The Engineering Department kickbacks case today came up in the court of UT District and Sessions Judge B. S. Bedi, with nine accused, including Municipal Corporation8217;s Superintending Engineer K. B. Sharma, being summoned in FIR 1 registered against them on February 3, 1998. The accused were supplied copies of the challans and the case was fixed for April 28 for scrutiny of the challan.

The chargesheet holds six MC officials, apart from middlemen Suresh Sharma, Dinesh Sharma and Sunil Kalia, guilty in the case. The remaining accused include K. B. Sharma SE, Harsh Kumar XEN, Mohinder Singh sub-divisional clerk, Gurpreet Singh sub-divisional engineer, K. L. Sachdeva retired superintendent and Sher Singh. The challan alleges that K. B. Sharma received huge commissions for placing supply orders of electrical items with Director General Supplies and Disposal DGS and D firms which worked through the aforementioned middlemen.

It further alleges that Sharma and other MC officials used to meet these middlemen in hotels to decide upon the kickbacks to be received against a particular supply order. The allegation is substantiated by entries in page 21 of the diary recovered from Kalia8217;s residence, which mentions Rs 5,600 as having been spent on 8220;food and whisky of K. B. Sharma8221; on January 17, 1997, at Hotel Sunbeam.

The said diary written between May 20, 1995 and October 20, 1997 also has details of supply orders placed by various MC departments, along with their total value and the percentage of commission received against them. Against a supply order given to Advance Steel Tubes, Harsh Kumar received Rs 2,000 as commission on January 12, 1997 page 12; he received another Rs 5,000 on Diwali page 13. Likewise, commissions received by Gurpreet Singh, Mohinder Singh and Sachdeva are entered in pages 11 and 20 of the diary, respectively.

It is further alleged that K. B. Sharma, after being promoted as SE, started placing supply orders independently. Even before the MC was constituted on June 24, 1996, the Sharma brothers had given Rs 20,000 as advance for receiving supply orders. Evidence to this effect is contained in page 26 of the recovered diary.

That K. B. Sharma used to receive commissions is also clear from statement of JE Ajay Dadwal, who admitted that Sharma placed supply orders with firms which worked through middlemen. He has mentioned that, at the instance of Gurpreet Singh, he once received the supply against the order dated November 3, 1997 and found the same to be less. When he complained to Sharma, he was allegedly transferred about eight times within six months.