New Delhi: Over two years after it contested the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED’s) demand for a re-trial and independent probe into the multi-crore Nagrik Apurti Nigam (NAN) scam case — allegedly involving senior civil servants of the erstwhile Congress regime in the state — the Chhattisgarh government has now supported the federal agency’s plea.
The ‘scam’, which pertains to alleged corruption in the state-run public distribution system (PDS), first came to the fore when Raman Singh’s BJP government was in power. The ED started investigating in 2019, a year after the Congress’s Bhupesh Baghel became chief minister.
In an affidavit filed before the top court, the months-old state BJP government has affirmed the ED’s charges against the top officials of Chhattisgarh, alleging they connived with “highly placed constitutional and state officials”, and made a “concerted effort to derail the trial and tamper (with) the evidence” in the case. The affidavit is signed by Christodas Tirkey, additional superintendent of police at the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Raipur.
The document, which ThePrint has reviewed, repeated the ED’s accusations against the civil servants, the state’s former advocate general and a sitting high court judge there. It stated that the WhatsApp chats between these officials — referenced by the ED in its petition — that sought a transfer of the trial to another state, “clearly point in the direction of seriousness of the allegations made in the present petition (by ED)”.
The two civil servants facing proceedings in the case are Anil Kumar Tuteja and Alok Shukla, who served in the Bhupesh Baghel government, while the former advocate general of the state, identified through the WhatsApp chats, is Satish Chandra Verma. Like ED, the state too has not named the sitting HC judge in its affidavit. But the annexed WhatsApp chats show the judge’s name as Justice Chandel, who was transferred last year to the Patna HC. Justice Chandel’s brother, Ajit Singh, then the chief secretary of Chhattisgarh, is said to have facilitated the mediation.
Justice Chandel had granted anticipatory bail to Shukla in the initial case registered by the state police, which later became the basis for ED’s probe into the scam case.
The Chhattisgarh government’s fresh affidavit in the matter has further questioned the earlier stand taken by the state, when Congress’s Baghel was in power. It raised doubts about the fairness of the earlier affidavit, saying it is “likely” that those “pleadings were filed to safeguard the interests of accused persons”.
“The possibility of involvement of the accused persons in preparation of the pleadings by the State thus far, cannot be ignored. Therefore, it is humbly submitted that reliance cannot be placed on the pleadings filed on behalf of the State thus far,” the state affidavit submitted.
It added that the state’s earlier stand was filed without taking into consideration the material, such as the Whatsapp chats, which has now come to the knowledge of the state government.
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What’s the case
The alleged PDS scam came to light in February 2015 when the Chhattisgarh ACB conducted raids at the offices of NAN, the nodal agency for ensuring effective operation of the PDS system in the state, and seized unaccounted cash amounting to Rs 3.64 crore.
An FIR was registered against 27 persons, accusing them of distributing sub-standard quality of rice and salt through fair price shops. Two senior IAS officers, Tuteja (former chairman of NAN) and Alok Shukla (former managing director of NAN) were suspended for overlooking the discrepancies.
During the raids, the ACB seized several documents, diaries, pen drives and computers that contained details of monetary transactions and information on beneficiaries.
In June 2015, the state ACB filed its chargesheet in the case against 11 of the 27 persons named in the FIR. The remaining 16 were included in the list of 200 witnesses. Of the 11 accused, only one was a private individual, identified as Munish Shah.
Charges were finally pressed against the officials in December 2018, almost two years after the Centre approved their prosecution. According to the anti-corruption law, prosecution of a sitting civil servant can only be done after their governing authority gives a go-ahead.
As the case moved to an anti-corruption court for trial, a Raipur-based lawyer, Sudeip Srivastava, approached the Supreme Court to seek further investigation. Basing his plea on the documents attached to the chargesheet, he claimed the police investigation was flawed.
Srivastava questioned the police for not looking into the role of former NAN officials who occupied prominent positions before 2015. However, on the top court’s advice, Srivastava went to the Chhattisgarh HC with his request.
While Srivastava’s Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was being argued in the HC, there was a regime change in Chhattisgarh. With Congress coming to power in the state in 2018, the PDS scam case also witnessed new developments.
Soon after assuming office, then CM Bhupesh Baghel reinstated both Tuteja and Shukla and set-up a special investigation team (SIT) to “re-investigate” the scam.
Their appointments, however, resulted in more petitions in the HC — which were clubbed with that of Srivastava — demanding a stay on the SIT’s functioning. In February 2019, the HC restrained the SIT from carrying out any probe, observing that the same would amount to a re-investigation.
This is when the ED stepped into the picture. The central agency initiated a probe against Tuteja and Shukla on charges of money-laundering. In a follow-up, it then filed a petition before the top court in November 2021, seeking transfer of the case to CBI, and a re-trial.
In the Supreme Court, the Baghel government contested the ED’s charges against the accused. Submitting before the SC in October 2022, senior counsel Kapil Sibal said Baghel never met any High Court judge, rejecting a top central government law officer’s suggestion about his probable complicity in the PDS scam case.
The Chhattisgarh govt’s affidavit
The Chhattisgarh government’s latest affidavit comes close to the heels of ED’s detailed affidavit that discloses WhatsApp chats between the accused and Verma. These chats show Tuteja was in regular touch with Verma regarding the ongoing case, it says. The online communication also includes a purported message by Verma to Tuteja in which he is requesting the senior bureaucrat to post Justice Chandel’s daughter and son-in-law in Raipur. This conversation was three months before Justice Chandel granted bail to Shukla.
The chats also reveal that both Tuteja and Shukla were in touch with Justice Chandel’s brother, Singh, before the judge granted bail to Shukla. Singh was removed from the chief secretary’s post in January 2019, but was appointed months later, in November, as vice-chairman of the state’s planning commission.
According to the Chhattisgarh government’s affidavit, Verma helped Tuteja and Shukla get bail in the scheduled offence. An analysis of the chats, it adds, shows that efforts were made to weaken the prosecution case against the accused. Verma updated the accused about the stand that the state was taking the HC during the hearing of the anticipatory bail applications, the affidavit says.
Besides, a draft affidavit that was prepared by the Baghel-government appointed SIT was shared with them for their perusal and comments. The two were not only involved in the constitution of the SIT, but also influencing its report. The WhatsApp chats, according to the affidavit, showed that Tuteja’s son Yash was in touch with the SIT and that one of the team members was pressuring the witness of the predicate offence to change their deposition to favour the senior bureaucrat.
Justice Chandel’s brother, the affidavit submitted, and the then in-charge of ACB, had diluted the predicate offence in order to acquit the two accused from corruption charges. The accused, it added, played a key role in influencing a key witness to retract his statement recorded in the anti-money laundering case registered by ED.
As per the affidavit Tuteja and Shukla “devised a mechanism to intimidate the officer who have sanctioned the prosecution against the accused”.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)