Supreme Court issues notice to Chhattisgarh government in multi-crore PDS scam

New Delhi, September 2: The Supreme Court has sought response from the Chhattisgarh government on a plea filed by a witness in the multi-crore Public Distribution System (PDS) scam alleging that all endeavour is made to derail the proceedings of the case in the trial court.

The apex court also sought response from the state government, its Economic Offences Wing/Anti-Corruption Bureau, Special Investigation Team on the plea seeking shifting of the alleged Rs 36,000 crore scam case outside Chhattisgarh.

A three-judge bench comprising Justices R F Nariman, Navin Sinha and Indira Banerjee issued notices to the respondents which also included some bureaucrats, news agency PTI reported.

“Issue notice, returnable in four weeks, in the writ petition as also in the application for stay,” the bench said.

The apex court was hearing a plea filed by one Girish Sharma, an employee of Chhattisgarh State Civil Supplies Corporation in Raipur, stating that the state government is endeavouring to derail the proceeding of the case in the trial court and sought its transfer.

“The petitioner is a crucial witness, in the multi-crore, Civil Supplies Scam, infamously known as NAN Scam and has been constrained to invoke the writ jurisdiction of this Court against malafide actions of the Respondent No. 1-State…has since Dec, 2018 been unrelentingly been making attempts to frustrate the trial,” the plea.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethamalani and advocate Ravi Sharma, appearing for the petitioner, sought transfer of trial, monitoring of the cases by apex court and directions to restrain the Chhattisgarh government from taking coercive action against him.

The Economic Offences Investigation (EOI) and Anti-corruption Bureau, Raipur, Chhattisgarh conducted raids on February 12, 2015 in different district offices and residents of the officers of Chhattisgarh State Civil Supplies Corporation and Chhattisgarh State Warehousing Corporation including its headquarter at Raipur and had registered a case against the officers of the corporation.

The Enforcement Directorate  had also also registered a money laundering case in connection with the scam against two IAS officers.

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