6 govt officials, 3 others booked in 2 Simhastha Kumbh cases

Six government employees and three others were booked for alleged irregularities in providing LED lights and toilets at the Simhastha Kumbh Mela organised in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh in May 2016, an official said on Tuesday.

MP Police Economic Offence Wing Superintendent (Ujjain) Rajesh Singh Raghuvanshi said the nine were booked after an inquiry into two private firms that had bagged these contracts.

In the first FIR related to LED lights, he said Ujjain Municipal Corporation Deputy Commissioner RP Shrivastava, Executive Engineer Rambabu Sharma and Sub engineer Jitendra Shrivastava, along with director Rishi Seth and manager manoj Jain of Noida-based private firm HPL Electric and Power Limited have been charged.

In the second FIR pertaining to temporary toilets, those charged are Siddharth Jain, director of Brick N Bond Infra Company along with Assistant Engineer Piyush Bhargava, Executive Engineer Rakesh Srivastava and Assistant Engineer Shyam Sundar Sharma, all three of the Ujjain Municipal Corporation.

Raghuvanshi said they have been charged under IPC sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating) and 201 (destroying evidence of crime).

He said HPL Electric and Power Limited bagged a Rs 22 crore contract to install LED lights, and the inquiry found that it had set up 11,630 lights, which was on the lower side.

Local corporator Maya Trivedi had complained to EOW Ujjain about the LED issue while then district panchayat CEO had complained about irregularities in installing toilets.