Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 9: After finding sufficient evidence that the defendants had abused their official position by allegedly appointing Aam Admi Party (AAP) members to various posts in the commission, a special court on Thursday ordered the framing of corruption and criminal conspiracy charges against Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) Chairperson Swati Maliwal and three others.
According to Special Judge Dig Vinay Singh, the court found that there is substantial evidence to support charges against each of the four accused, and the circumstances support this finding.
The court also mandated the prosecution of former DCW members Promila Gupta, Sarika Chaudhary, and Farheen Malick in addition to DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal.
The four defendants in the conspiracy, in the eyes of the prosecution, conspired to take advantage of their official positions in order to benefit both the ruling AAP party and Swati Maliwal’s friends and party associates financially.
Such employees and associates are said to have been appointed to DCW positions outside of the established procedures. Instead, the appointments were made without even advertising for the positions, in violation of General Finance Rules (GFR) and other guidelines, and money was distributed to numerous such people for remuneration/salary/honorarium.
The Court stated in its judgment that reading the minutes of the meetings the DCW conducted on different days, in which all four accused parties signed, was ‘enough to prima facie point to a strong suspicion that the appointments in question were made by the accused people in conjunction with each other.’
