18 officials among 20 chargesheeted in fake appointment case in JK's Baramulla

The Anti-Corruption Bureau on Friday filed a chargesheet indicting 20 persons including 18 government officials in a fake appointment case in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, a spokesman of the anti-graft body said.

The charge sheet was filed in a nine-year-old case related to fake appointments in Public Health Engineering (PHE) division Baramulla and Ferozpora Basin Irrigation (FBI) division, Tangmarg, said the spokesperson.

The probe report was filed in the court of special judge trying cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the spokesman added.

He said the accused included 12 former officials of PHE's Baramulla division and include seven executive engineers and six former officials of the FBI division including an executive engineer besides two beneficiaries.

He said former Executive Engineer Syed Mohd Amin Shah of PHE's Baramulla division had forwarded the basic daily wagers list to the then PHE chief engineer, wherein, the accused beneficiaries -- Manzoor Ahmad Malik and Zahoor Ahmad Bhat -- were not figuring and has initiated the service books of the illegal beneficiaries at a later stage after a gap of 12 years.

"It has become the basis for the illegal beneficiaries to get themselves adjusted and later regularized as helpers in the department," the spokesman said.

He said the accused public servants have done such illegal act fraudulently and dishonestly with the knowledge that the accused beneficiaries were neither working as daily rated casual workers nor were falling within the ambit of government order for regularization of their services in 1996.