Patna High Court - Orders
Raj Kumar vs Union Of India Thru.C.B.I. on 24 February, 2010
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT PATNA
Cr.Misc. No.19088 of 2009
RAJ KUMAR, son of Late Jawahar Jha, Enquiry Cum Reservation Clerk, PRS. N.
F. Railway, Katihar
... Petitioner.
Versus
Union of India through Central Bureau of Investigation. ..... Opp. Party.
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6. 24.02.2010Heard counsel for the petitioner and counsel for the opposite party.
The petitioner facing prosecution for offence under Sections 120B, 420, 467, 468 & 477 A of I.P.C. and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 seeks anticipatory bail on the ground that the FIR was delayed for almost four months inasmuch as the period in question under review of his working was the month of June-July, 2007 whereas CBI had lodged the FIR only in the month of November 2007.
The next submission of counsel for the petitioner is that the petitioner is merely a clerk and thus it was impossible for him to defalcate such a huge amount of Rs.45,00,000/- by himself unless there were also other persons involved. He has also submitted that in the FIR it was said that 2 the petitioner had committed such an offence in connivance with others but in the charge-
sheet, only the petitioner was shown to be person sent up for trial. The gist of the submission therefore is that the petitioner has not committed any offence and the entire story given by the CBI in the FIR is a cock and bull story and therefore it must be treated to be a false and absurd case in which the petitioner would be entitled for grant of anticipatory bail.
Counsel for the CBI has produced the copy of charge-sheet wherein upon detailed review and in fact after investigation of the case, it has been recorded that "...During investigation, it came to light that Shri Raj Kumar, ECRC/KIR whose modus- operandi was to start by generating system BPTs. In case the point to which reservation is made falls in the route of the train the tickets generated by PRS is a journey-cum- reservation ticket. When on the other hand a PRS ticket is generated for a destination which does not fall within the route of the train (reservation being up to the nearest point to which the train travels) or the station is not defined in the system as a cluster station, then the PRS generates a BPT (Blank Paper Ticket) which has been referred to a system BPT. This is a normal 3 transaction at any PRS counter.
When such BPT was modified on or around 25.06.07, for either date of journey or train no etc., the system generated an uncleared refund of abnormally high value of approx. of Rs.88,000/- on account of system aberration. This amount of refund was deducted by the system automatically such that in the shift/ending DTC summary, earnings reflected got reduced by this amount. As a result, there was actually surplus of cash available at the counter to the extent of such unrelated minus amount vis-à- vis what was reflected in the DTC summary generated at the end of the shift. Instead of informing of this system aberration to the higher authorities Shri Raj Kumar, ECRS/KIR on the same day generated fresh tickets of amount equivalent to that caused by the system aberration. Thereafter Raj Kumar cancelled the tickets as per his convenience and pocketed the corresponding amount. A total of 22 tickets were got cancelled by said Shri Raj Kumar and an amount of Rs.3,71,327/- was misappropriated by him.
It was also revealed during investigation that while
matching the summary the month of June 2007 for Koktata PRS, it was found that there was a mismatch in the total earnings between the collected cash (daily report) and the originating earning of the site. In order to identify the root cause of the problem, all DTC (Detailed Transaction Checklist) which showed transaction of a session in chronological order of all the operators were scrutinized to identify the erroneous transaction resulting in negative cumulative base fare. While going through all the DTCs of the 4 particular operator named KIRRK, a number of negative value were found in some SL class transactions. These negative values should have contributed less amount in the net earning of that operator and as a result of that he should have possessed some excess cash on his counter. Normally, if any type of anomaly is observed in any system related area, the location directly calls the Control Center (CONSOL) or CRIS in order to report such problem as locations are directly connected through intercom. It was also observed that a large number of High Value AC First Class Tickets for Rajdhani or similar trains were booked in order to prevent negative total amount. In stead of bringing it to the notice of the concerned offices, the operator went on preparing the system BPTs in the train n. 4083 beyond the train destination and subsequently modified it to the train no. 5707 for a high negative value tickets. To neutralize these negative value in CASH, he prepared high value tickets in Rajdhani and few other Superfast trains. CRIS officials checked the PNRs of the High Value tickets and found that the names of the passengers were of same pattern..."
These findings in course of investigation by the C.B.I. were also dully supported with the objective, individual examination of railway tickets with specific finding that the bottom portion of a number of spurious tickets was torn by the petitioner in order to remove the evidence.
In that view of the matter, it would 5 be premature for this Court to give any finding as with regard to correctness of the allegation of the prosecution but nonetheless it can be easily inferred that there were some materials for the CBI to hold and infer that the petitioner had committed criminal misconduct in capacity of a government servant, being an employee of Indian Railway.
Anticipatory bail cannot be granted to any person involved in misappropriation of public money and the same standard has to be also followed in case of a public servant.
There being a direct allegation against the petitioner substantiated in course of investigation, this Court would not find any merit in the submission of counsel for the petitioner that the FIR was delayed by four months. It is well known that such hi-tech offences are difficult to be detected and thus unless the CBI had made a full-fledged inquiry which is known as P.E. (Preliminary Enquiry), it cannot have lodged a F.I.R. on incomplete and half baked materials. This court also does not find any merit in the plea of aforesaid plea of delay specially when the Chief Vigilance Inspector of the 6 Railways having detected complicity of the petitioner and others had lodged the report on 5.10.2007 on the basis of which the CBI having made its enquiry had lodged FIR on 29.11.2007.
That being so, the prayer for anticipatory bail of the petitioner is hereby rejected.
kanchan (Mihir Kumar Jha, J.)