This story is from November 22, 2014

Mammoth chargesheet filed against ex-JMC CEO

Nearly two months after arresting former JMC CEO Lalchand Aswal in connection with rampant corruption in the civic body's tender process, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) filed a chargesheet of nearly 21,000 pages against him in a court on Friday.
Mammoth chargesheet filed against ex-JMC CEO
JAIPUR: Nearly two months after arresting former JMC CEO Lalchand Aswal in connection with rampant corruption in the civic body's tender process, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) filed a chargesheet of nearly 21,000 pages against him in a court on Friday.
The chargesheet provides a shocking account of how tenders were issued without even necessary administrative and technical clearance. The ACB even carried out inspection of various civic works like construction of roads and found gross irregularities.
Those contractors who paid commission got the payment for their work quickly, while payments of other contractors were stalled, says the chargesheet. ACB has booked Aswal for various sections of Prevention of Corruption Act.
The chargesheet gives out details of gross irregularities in the tender process and the civic work undertaken when Aswal was CEO. "The chargesheet has revealed these irregularities. Apart from finding them on our own, the ACB had set up two independent committees, each headed by an additional chief engineer rank officer. One of the two committees investigated technical irregularities, while the other found out irregularities in the work undertaken by physical inspection of roads and other such things," said Add SP, ACB, Shankar Dutt.
The officer said the agency had seized 46 files from the possession of a JMC engineer Purushottam Jaswani.
The files were seized when JMC engineer Purushottam Jaswani was on his way to give the files and Rs 15 lakh cash to Aswal. Jaswani was arrested in front of Aswal's house in August. On September 26, Aswal was also arrested. "During inspection of 46 files, we found gross irregularities. The tenders in these files were worth nearly Rs 16 crore. It came up during investigation that Rs 15 lakh seized from Jaswani was the commission earned on these tenders," said the officer.

The officer added that the investigation against Aswal proved an uphill task. "We collected every document from his office as well as from other officers and employees' offices. It included audit reports, technical reports and other such documents. The basic chargesheet is just 200 pages, but if the number of pages of documents we seized is included, it consists of 21,000 pages," said the officer who investigated the case.
Shankar Dutt said during the investigation, ACB had seized paper slips from JMC office. "On the paper slips, we found names of those contractors who had paid the bribe. So their payments were cleared quickly. However, there were contractors who had their payment pending since October, 2013," said the officer.
ACB has already filed a chargesheet against Jaswani. The agency charged Jaswani with various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act which includes income beyond his known sources, misuse of his official position, criminal conspiracy and extortion. ACB has named 15 witnesses and produced 28 documents to prove the case.
The officer said as Aswal had retired, ACB didn't need prosecution sanction from the government to file the chargesheet.
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