Chandigarh: The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Haryana Tuesday arrested senior IAS officer Vijay Singh Dahiya in connection with an FIR filed against him earlier this year. In April, a woman named Poonam Chopra was taken into custody for accepting a bribe, allegedly on behalf of Dahiya, from Rinku Manchanda, who runs a skill development center.
Dahiya, a 2001 batch IAS officer of Haryana Cadre, was commissioner, Haryana Skill Department, Panchkula, when the ACB first questioned him on 20 April following Chopra’s arrest. She was made to call Dahiya and ask him to come to a restaurant in Chandigarh to hand over the bribe received the same day. Manchanda had filed an FIR earlier that day naming Dahiya, Chopra and one more person.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed Dahiya’s bail plea on 6 June this year, terming it “sans merit”.
The officer proceeded to take medical leave following the registration of the FIR.
Moreover, in the posting and transfer order issued by the Haryana government on 28 July, Dahiya was not given any posting.
Sources in the ACB told ThePrint that Dahiya was summoned for questioning at their headquarters in Panchkula Tuesday and was subsequently arrested. He was later produced before a local court where he was remanded to judicial custody for 14 days.
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What is the case
As per the prosecution’s stand in High Court’s order on Dahiya’s bail plea, the FIR was lodged on the complaint of Rinku Manchanda, who ran an institute called Gramin Shiksha as a partner under the Haryana Skill Development Mission to provide training to poor families in computers, AC-related work, and beauty parlour courses.
He alleged that an amount of Rs 50 lakh was due to be paid to him by the state’s youth empowerment and entrepreneurship department, but the same had not been released for three years.
He claimed to have met one Deepak Sharma — the third person named in the FIR — posted as the chief skills officer (CSO) in the department, who demanded a bribe of Rs 5 lakh to clear the bills and told Manchanda that if he wanted his bills to be cleared quickly then he should contact a lady named Poonam Chopra.
According to Manchanda, he was asked by Chopra to pay Rs 5 lakh as bribe to Dahiya, “out of which she shall charge a share to the extent of 5 percent” to get his bills cleared. Of the 5 lakh, Manchanda paid her Rs 2 lakh.
Manchanda added that Chopra had also forwarded WhatsApp messages to him, allegedly from Dahiya, confirming that a portion of the bills will be cleared. He said Chopra told him that if he fails to pay the remaining Rs 3 lakh, she would not allow the rest of the bills to be cleared.
The complainant, who had recorded the audio of the conversation between him and Chopra, subsequently reported the matter to the vigilance bureau on 20 April.
The prosecution further said in its reply, accessed by ThePrint, to Dahiya’s bail application in June that pursuant to the receipt of information, an FIR was lodged and a trap was laid to catch Chopra in the act. As planned, she was caught red-handed while accepting illegal gratification worth Rs 3 lakh, the remaining amount, from Manchanda in Panchkula.
During her interrogation on 20 April, she said that she had met Dahiya while employed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. She also disclosed the time and location where she was due to meet Dahiya to hand over the money — at Café Tonino in Sector 8, Chandigarh, at 7.30 pm.
The ACB accompanied her to the location where Dahiya was already waiting for her. They were in the restaurant for an hour. Dahiya was then taken for questioning at ACB headquarters but was later let go.
Two days later, an amount of Rs 2 lakh was recovered from the drawer of the desk in Chopra’s office in Delhi’s Janakpuri area on 22 April. The same day, CSO Deepak Sharma was arrested. He has since turned approver in the case.
Complicity of petitioner ‘writ large’
While dismissing Dahiya’s bail plea, Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill of the Punjab and Haryana High Court observed that the complicity of the petitioner (Dahiya) is writ large.
The court said that, “As noticed from the extracts of ‘WhatsApp’ conversation…the co-accused Poonam, although not serving in Haryana Skill Department, was being apprised about all the developments pertaining to clearing of bills. Apparently, it was on account of connivance of the two accused that the petitioner was keeping Poonam updated about the progress in clearing of bills (sic).”
“The bills submitted by the complainant were otherwise pending approval since the last three years but once the deal was struck between the complainant and accused, the files started moving quickly. The petitioner approved six bills of the complainant amounting to about Rs. 11 lacs within a period of twelve days. Thus, it is not a case that co-accused Poonam had bluffed the complainant by falsely representing that she could get the work done through the petitioner but she actually was working in connivance with him,” the court said.
It added that although Dahiya was let off after questioning on 20 April, “it cannot be construed as a pointer to his innocence”.
“Rather, it shows that the investigating agency chose to be sure and collected sufficient evidence against the petitioner before initiating any proceedings to arrest him,” the HC observed.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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