Delhi land scam: Charges to be framed against 10 accused

New Delhi, May 5 (IANS) A CBI special court here has decided to frame charges against 10 accused, including ex-officials of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), for alleged lapses in the allotment of plots as part of the resettlement of slum dwellers.

The accused were allegedly involved in allotment of plots in fictitious names under the scheme executed by the Slum and Jhuggi Jhopri Department.

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge Anoop Kumar Mendiratta fixed May 9 as the date for order on the framing of charge against the accused in the land scam.

"As such, prima facie all the accused are liable to be charged for offences under section 120 B Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy) read with section 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of a valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document as genuine) and 13(2) read with 13(1)(d) (for bribery) of the Prevention of Corruption Act...," the court said in an order passed Friday.

According to the charge sheet, during the period 2006-07, Sumer Chand Garg, assistant director, slum up-gradation and relocation department, and Atul Vashisht , upper divison clerk, entered into a conspiracy along with Ashok Malhotra, a food stall vendor, and businessman Ashok Jain and others for allotment the plots in fictitious names.

The other accused in the case are Ashok Chikara, Lal Mani, Ram Chander Arora, Ravinder Sandhu, Vijay Kumar and Mohan Lal.

The court after taking note of the statement of prosecution witnesses said: "At this stage even the same reflect that accused Ashok Malhotra in conspiracy with other accused was involved in illegal allotments."

The court was hearing a case regarding illegalities in land allotment in respect of slum dwellers of Yamuna Pushta who were evicted and resettled in other areas by the civic agency.