Court sentences two CFSL scientists in corruption case

A Delhi court today sentenced two former Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) scientists in CBI to varying jail terms for giving incorrect forensic opinion to falsely implicate a person in a civil suit.
CBI Special Judge Kanwaljeet Arora awarded two years of rigorous imprisonment to Dr S C Mittal, the then Principal Scientific Officer and Head of Division (Documents) in the CFSL wing of the agency here.
V K Khanna, the then Principal Scientific Officer in CFSL wing of CBI, was also handed down one-year of jail term.
The court had convicted both the officials for criminal conspiracy and under the various sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Besides Mittal and Khanna, the judge also awarded two- year jail term to Delhi resident Ramesh Sharma who was also held guilty of the same offences.
"The present case involves the two senior scientific experts of CFSL who, by virtue of their position, were holding the reins of the administration being part of the system of investigation/detection, who allegedly got themselves involved with a private individual and diluted the expected standards of integrity and procedural skills expected of them while working on certain documents referred to CFSL for expert opinion by court," the court said.
According to CBI, in 2005 Mittal, Khanna and Sharma had allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy to give undue advantage to Sharma in a case of property dispute filed by him against one Brahm Prakash Sharma.

"In pursuance of the criminal conspiracy, both the CFSL officials abused their official position as public servants and framed a report giving a wrong opinion as experts and forwarded the said report to Additional SHO, Defence Colony Police Station, for submission in the court in order to favour Sharma," CBI Special Public Prosecutor Harish Kumar Gupta had said.