New Delhi, Oct 7 The Delhi High Court has directed initiation of perjury proceedings against five CBI officials before a magisterial court for allegedly making a factually incorrect statement in a case.
Justice Madhu Jain, in an order passed on October 6, said that prima facie, the CBI officials, along with the special public prosecutor, participated in the "preparation, alteration, vetting, processing, approval or filing" of a reply in 2016, which contained an incorrect assertion on "correspondence" with the law ministry on taking further legal action against a former IRS officer in a disproportionate assets case despite knowing the "actual position" that the issue was only at the stage of internal consideration of the agency.
A trial court had discharged ex-IRS officer Ashok Kumar Aggarwal in 2016 on the ground of invalid sanction, after which he filed an application seeking release of seized documents.
The CBI, in response to the application, claimed in the trial court that correspondence with the administrative ministry on further legal action in the matter was "underway" and it would therefore not be prudent to return the seized documents at this stage.
Justice Jain set aside the trial court order refusing to take action for perjury against the officials on Aggarwal's plea and held that the CBI had no right to present its internal proposal as a correspondence with the ministry.
The court noted that the ministry had earlier already rendered an opinion that there appeared to be no reasonable ground to agitate the matter further before a higher forum.
"In the present case, the assertion concerning ongoing correspondence was used as a factual ground to oppose the appellant's request and to seek continued retention of his documents. The respective acts of preparing, altering, vetting, processing, approving and filing the reply, read with the knowledge disclosed by the preceding drafts and file-notings, furnish a reasonable basis for the prima facie inference that the concerned officers participated in advancing a claim which was known to be inconsistent with the existing position," the court observed.
"The appellant's application under Section 340 CrPC filed before the learned special judge is therefore, allowed by this Court ... The learned special judge is hereby directed to make a complaint in writing against Sushil Dewan, Vineet Vinayak, Amit Kumar, Raman Tyagi, Prem Kumar Gautam and Md. Azad for the alleged commission of offences punishable under Section 191 read with Section 193 IPC and Section 209 IPC, and to transmit the same to the concerned jurisdictional magistrate within a period of four weeks from the date of receipt of this judgment," the court ordered.
Section 191 and 193 deal with the offence of "giving false evidence", and section 209 pertains to "dishonestly making false claim in court".
The court clarified that the lower court shall proceed independently in the matter without being influenced by any observation made by it.
