The court convicted retired joint director of MCD's JJ Slum department and head of lock committee Kundan Lal, 66, and members of the committee Ram Charan Kamal and Shankar Sahni and property dealer R S Sandhu for the offences of attempt to cheat, forgery, using forged documents as genuine and criminal conspiracy under the IPC and under provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.
A former joint director in MCD, two former public servants and a property dealer have been sent to four years in jail by a Delhi court in a case of fraudulent allotment of plots meant for slum dwellers.
The court awarded the imprisonment to the four convicts, saying that no lenient view can be taken against them as they joined hands to deprive the owners of their rights to possess plots against their shanties.
The court convicted retired joint director of MCD's JJ Slum department and head of lock committee Kundan Lal, 66, and members of the committee Ram Charan Kamal and Shankar Sahni and property dealer R S Sandhu for the offences of attempt to cheat, forgery, using forged documents as genuine and criminal conspiracy under the IPC and under provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.
"Considering the nature of offence, no lenient view can be taken against the convicts...Lal, Kamal and Sahni held an extremely powerful position and they were to charter the course of destiny of deserving poor JJ dwellers by allotting plots to them," Special Judge Hemani Malhotra said.
The court said that for their ill-motives and to earn illegal wealth, the three public servants joined hands with Sandhu to deprive the owners of their rights to possess plots against their shanties.
It also referred to Austrian writer Karl Kraus' quote that "corruption is worst than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country" and said it was an insight to a corrupt society.
"We as citizens of India are under a moral obligation to crush the ugly head of corruption so that it may not raise its head again," the judge added.
According to the Anti-Corruption Branch, it received a complaint in April 2011 alleging that officials of MCD's Slum and JJ Department, including Lal, Kamal and Sahni, were indulging in malpractices with the help of property dealers.
It alleged that the property dealers including Sandhu were making forged ration cards, identity cards purported to have been issued by the Delhi Administration and municipal corporations of Delhi (MCDs) and were getting the names of non existent persons mentioned in the survey list of shanties to get them allotted alternative plots here from the JJ Department.
A list of 28 non existent slum dwellers in whose names plots were allotted at Bhalswa here was also attached with the complaint.
Public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava sought stern punishment for the convicts and argued that to curb such offences, strong message is required to be conveyed to the society.
The four men denied the charges against them and claimed that they were falsely implicated.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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