Enough evidence to proceed in Hotel Oberoi Maidens graft case

A special court has said there is sufficient evidence to proceed further against a top executive of the heritage hotel Oberoi Maidens, in a graft case involving an IRS officer and officials of a Delhi civic body for allegedly clearing unauthorised construction.
The court, however, is yet to take cognizance of the offences made out and has directed the CBI to approach the concerned authorities for sanction to prosecute the public servants accused in the case.
The CBI, which had earlier filed a closure report in the case, had again filed a supplementary closure report but the court said the contents of the final reports and the material placed, clearly showed the involvement of all the accused.

CBI had in October 2013, lodged a case under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act against some officials of North Delhi Municipal Corporation and Executive Vice President of Hotel Oberoi Maidens, Raja Raman Shankar.
The public servants named in the FIR were IRS officer and Deputy Commissioner of the corporation Hamendra Kumar, then superintendent engineer of Civil Lines Zone Rajesh Wadhwa, then executive engineer A K Singh, then Assistant Engineer Suraj Prakash, Junior Engineer Pushan Vishwas, then mate of the Zone Satish Kumar and then Assistant Engineer of Rohini Zone M K Gupta.
While perusing the closure report, the judge said, "The contents of the final reports and the material placed before this court clearly show the involvement of all the accused persons in issuance of the above said letter (issued by corporation to hotel's executive vice president) dated May 2, 2013, which was issued for the sole purpose of extending benefit to the hotel authorities in restoring the demolished structure of their ground floor portion under the garb of carrying out some repairs."

"The transcripts of the recorded conversations also show the existence of a criminal conspiracy between the accused public servants and other accused Raja Raman Shankar (hotel official) for issuance of the said letter against the payment of some bribe amount," Special CBI Judge M K Nagpal said.
The court said the contents of the final reports and other material placed before it were "sufficient" to take cognizance and proceed further in the matter against all accused for the offence of criminal conspiracy read with criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act.