SUMAN K SHRIVASTAVA
Ranchi, Dec. 8: The court of Jamshedpur Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) has summoned Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) Chairman and former president of Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA) Amitabh Chaudhary and three others on December 18 after taking cognizance of a protest petition filed by Ujjal Das, ex-first class cricketer.
The other three persons who have also been summoned are JSCA member Ranjeet Kumar Singh, JSCA ex-secretary Rajesh Verma and ex-treasurer of JSCA Govinda Mukherjee. They were dealing with the financial matters of the JSCA.
The case involves allegations of embezzlement/misuse of Rs 196.23 crore under a conspiracy received by the JSCA from the BCCI from 2010 to 2015.
The BCCI paid Rs 196.23 crore to the JSCA during this period and this had been revealed by the then Secretary of the BCCI Anurag Thakur in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court.
The BCCI had separately provided a huge amount of money to the JSCA for construction of the stadium. The construction of the JSCA stadium began in 2009 and was completed on January 18 2013.
The case had been filed by former first class cricketer Ujjal Das in 2017 in the CJM Court. The police had investigated the matter and submitted a final report on March 22, 2018, absolving them of the charges ’in absence of evidence’.
Das later filed a protest petition in the CJM court and pointed out several loopholes in the final report filed by the police. He also submitted various documents including an E-mail copy of the BCCI which mentions that all officials are public servants as good as government servants, documents related to payment made by BCCI to the JSCA under various heads amounting to Rs 196.23 crores among others (Rs 44.97 crore for infrastructure, Rs 10.96 cropre for cricket and Rs 140.3 crore under others head.) and documents revealing misuse of funds.
Former life member of Jharkhand State Cricket Association (JSCA) cum former secretary of Ranchi Cricket Association Sunil Kumar Singh, a witness in the case, said that the police report contains the testimony of only one of the accused i.e. Rajesh Verma. Incidentally, Verma was on foreign tour as manager of the Under -19 cricket team and not in India when the police recorded his testimony in their investigation report.
“The other persons whose statement was recorded by the police included Debashish Chakravorty, nominated as Secretary in 2017 and Ashok Kumar Singh, a retired engineer hired by the JSCA for monitoring the construction of the stadium,” he pointed out.
Das has alleged that the accused persons have opened the restaurant in the premises of the stadium and have also provided the premises for various occasions like marriage, birthday, engagement etc and have been earning huge amounts of money out of the aforesaid business in violation of the rules.
He further alleged that these persons used to make false documents and used to drain out the amount of money to be provided by BCCI for their own use.
According to Das, they are liable to be punished under Section 467( Forgery of valuable security), 468(Forgery for purpose of cheating), 471( Using as genuine a forged document which is known to be forged), 409(Criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) and120B (Punishment of criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.
Sunil Singh said that he has documents to prove that the fund was used for individual benefits and for commercial purposes other than cricket. “So, a forensic audit should be conducted of the BCCI funds used by the JSCA office bearers,” he added.
He said that the JSCA is registered under the Society Registration Act and its fund can’t be used for personal benefits of a member. However, there are documents to prove that several members of the JSCA got benefits getting contracts to supply construction materials to the JSCA.
The CJM Court took cognizance of the protest petition filed by Das. The court observed that after perusal of the averments made on the complaint petition and the statement of inquiry witnesses Sunil Kumar Singh and Shesh Nath Pathak, prima facie it appears there were sufficient materials to proceed against Chaudhary and the other three.
