Court rap for Kejri adviser over Bassi plea

New Delhi: A trial court has dismissed a criminal complaint filed by Delhi government against former Delhi Police commissioner BS Bassi and 23 others saying that the litigation appears to be "vindictive" and the complainant had no locus standi to file the plea.
"The magisterial courts, which are already reeling under the pressure of backlog, cannot be further burdened by non-serious, luxurious, vindictive litigations.The provisions of CrPC cannot be permitted to be abused to provide a platform for settling scores with opponents. The present complaint appears to be one such litigation," Metropolitan Magistrate Kadambari Awasthi said.
Rejecting the complaint filed by Gopal Mohan, adviser (anti-corruption) to chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, the court cited various grounds on why the complaint - seeking prosecution of Bassi and others for allegedly committing cheating, forgery, criminal intimidation, etc - doesn't deserve to be entertained.
The complaint stated that Bassi conspired with others in 1989 to get a flat allotted to him at Lucky Home Co-Op Society in Rohini in violation of norms. Apart from Bassi, his brother Ravi Bassi, erstwhile MCD commissioner KS Mehra and 20 others were named as respondents in the matter.
Allegations of corruption against Bassi were first levelled by the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi assembly in December, 2015. The government had received the complaint by one Manish Kumar Angirash in this regard after which an inquiry was conducted and a complaint filed in court.
The court said that Angirash was neither a member of the said housing society nor involved with the assets of the society in any manner.
"The Delhi government has no financial control over the activities of the property owned by the society and its members. The locus standi of Angirash to even file the complaint against the society with the anti-corruption bureau, as no wrongful loss has been caused to him or Delhi government, is questionable," the court said, adding that no inquiry report was produced in court to substantiate Angirash's allegations.
The complainant had also alleged that a member of the society, Jaipal Sharma, was wrongly expelled by its office bearers to allot a flat to Bassi. The court found no merit in this and said no affected person would "sleep over his rights" for so long.
"During the last 27 years (from 1989-2016) after the approval of expulsion of Sharma in 1989, no person nor any member of the society challenged the above said acts before any competent authority/court," the court said.
Raising questions on the intent of Angirash's complaint, the court observed that the complaint could be an outcome of a marital discord as the complainant was the son-in-law of respondent number 1. Angirash, admittedly, did not have cordial relations with his wife.
"Such a motivated complainant could not have been a ground for Mohan to have rushed to this court as the adviser to the chief minister, pressing for fastening criminal liability against the respondents for acts done more than two decades ago," the court order stated.