Quddusi moves court over leak of phone conversation transcripts

Retired Odisha High Court Judge I.M. Quddusi, accused of graft, on Wednesday moved a Delhi court to seek a court-monitored probe into leak of transcripts of his alleged telephonic conversation in a corruption case.

The case involved help extended to an Uttar Pradesh-based educational trust that had been barred from admitting students in its medical course for two years.

Qudussi's counsel Vijay Aggarwal told Special Judge Manoj Jain that the transcripts as well as the confidential report on the preliminary inquiry into the case were leaked to the media.

The petitioner also claimed that while the confidential report had not been supplied to the accused, it was in the hands of people outside the investigating agency.

He urged the court to monitor case investigations and pass necessary orders for an inquiry as to whether the Central Bureau of Investigation had committed criminal misconduct by leaking documents in the case.

"... whether theft of documents has been committed... these documents are confidential in nature, and as to who are the erring persons," his application read.

The counsel urged the court to direct for an inquiry as to whether any document or conversations have been tampered with or not.

"Such things raise grave suspicion and apprehension of interference of third parties in the investigation," the counsel told the court.

The counsel also pointed out that the CBI is outside the Right to Information Act's ambit, but still the documents are in possession of outsiders.

The court listed the matter for January 22.

Quddusi, B.P. Yadav, Palash Yadav, Bishwanath Agrawala, and Ram Dev Saraswat were arrested on September 20, 2017, by the CBI on charge of helping the educational trust. Sixth accused Bhawana Pandey was arrested on September 21, 2017.

All accused were granted bail in the case.

The agency had registered a case of criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the accused on September 19, 2017, and conducted raids at eight locations in Delhi, Lucknow, and Bhubaneswar.

The CBI FIR said B.P. Yadav and Palash Yadav were managing the Lucknow-based Prasad Educational Trust, which runs the Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences.

The institute is among 46 colleges barred by the government from admitting medical course students for two years (till 2019) because of substandard facilities and non-fulfilment of criteria.

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Monday filed a complaint against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra in the medical college scam case and requested five senior most apex court Judges, including the four rebel Judges, to hold an in-house inquiry into the matter.

In his complaint, Bhushan also mentioned tapped conversations purportedly between Quddusi, Biswanath Agarwala, a middleman, and B.P. Yadav.

--IANS

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