HC upholds PWD cashier's 3 year jail-term in 24 year-old case

In a 24-year-old corruption case against a PWD employee, the Delhi High Court has upheld three years jail-term awarded to him by a trial court for encashing cheques worth more than Rs 21,000 by forging documents on account of LTC advances in the name of three other employees.
Dismissing the plea of Ved Prakash, working as a cashier with PWD of Delhi government in September 1988, against the trial court's November 1999 conviction and sentence orders under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), Justice P K Bhasin said "this appeal is without any merit and the judgment of the trial court cannot be faulted for any reason. Therefore, this appeal is dismissed."

According to the prosecution, in September 1988, the accused had prepared false applications for grant of Leave Travel Concession(LTC) advances in the name of three architects and also prepared sanction orders by forging the signatures of various officials.
It was also alleged that on the basis of forged sanction orders, the accused had prepared false bills and obtained cheques and encashed them.
After examining the evidence placed by CBI against Ved Prakash, the court said "it stood established that the accused had forged sanction orders for Rs 8,000, Rs 5,950 and Rs 6,500 and also prepared false bills."
The court accepted the expert's report that "the signatures of the sanctioning officers appeared to be in the handwriting of the accused."

The court also accepted the statements of the officials saying "the officials whose signatures purported to appear on the sanction orders, when appeared in the witness box, denied that they had signed those sanction orders."
"No argument was made before me by the counsel for the accused to show that the expert's report was not trustworthy.