CBI files charge sheet against Himachal CM

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister and former Union Minister Virbhadra Singh has unaccounted wealth worth “192 per cent of his known sources of incomes” which he has amassed during his tenure as the union steel minister, the Central Bureau of Investigation said in a charge sheet filed hours after the Delhi High Court dismissed Singh's plea seeking the quashing of an FIR filed against him. 

The CBI has charged nine people including Virbhadra Singh, his wife Pratibha Singh and LIC agent Anand Chauhan. 

CBI filed the chargesheet in the court of Special CBI Judge Virendra Kumar Goyal. 

The over four-hundred page chargesheet mentions 225 witnesses and gives details of Singh’s income from January 28, 2009 to October 18, 2011. Singh, along with eight others have been booked under section 465 (Punishment for forgery), 471 and 109 (Punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) 

It also mentions that during investigations, Singh could not give any information of the extra assets that he had. The other people named in the chargesheet are Joginder Ghalta, Chunni Lal Chauhan, Prem Raj, Lawan Kumar Roach, Vaka Mullah Chandrashekhar and Ram Prakash.

Earlier in the day, while dismissing Singh’s plea, Justice Vipin Sanghi also stayed an interim order of the Himachal Pradesh High Court which restrained the CBI from arresting, interrogating and filing a charge sheet in the case without the prior permission of the court.  
 
In his plea, the CM said raids were conducted at his residence and other places with “malafide intentions and political vendetta” by the probe agency. It also added that “the CBI has no authority or jurisdiction to carry out investigation in the State of Himachal Pradesh, since the said state has not granted its consent to such investigation in the state”.

Speaking to DNA, one of the counsels for Virbhadra Singh, Parmatma Singh said that they are going to appeal against the judgment.

"We have the option of challenging the high court order at a division bench of the high court or approach the Supreme Court," Singh said. 

However, Justice Sanghi did not find any merit in the arguments that the case did not pertain to Delhi. It observed that the FIR was registered while Singh was serving as the Union Minister in Delhi and was drawing his salary from here, thus giving the jurisdiction to a Special Judge in the national capital.

“An accused cannot dictate to the prosecution that the case should be registered at a police station that he desires. The case may be registered at any one of the police stations within whose jurisdiction the same can be legally instituted,” said Justice Sanghi.
 
“Issues with regard to the validity of the investigation conducted by the CBI in the State of Himachal Pradesh, in my view, cannot be raised in a writ petition, and all such issues would be available to be raised by the accused, if and when the occasion arises,” the court added.

The investigating agency CBI had registered an FIR stating that the CM had allegedly amassed a property worth Rs 6 crore between 2009-12, during his tenure as the Union Steel Minister.
 
“Singh while serving as the Union Minister of Steel during his 2009-2011 had invested his ill-gotten income through Anand Chauhan, an agent of LIC, in policies in his name along with that of his wife Pratibha Singh, son Vikramaditya Singh and daughter Aparajita Kumari”. He showed them as their agricultural income,” said the FIR. 

Singh, through his counsel had also contended that the FIR does not hold ground because it was based on a first preliminary enquiry which was closed initially. But countering this, the CBI said that the content of the second preliminary enquiry, on the basis of which the said FIR has been registered, were different altogether.
 
The investigating agency had argued that the first FIR was registered against unknown officials of M/s Ispat Industries Ltd and not against Singh and his family.
 
The court ruled that, “The said two offences are distinct and different. They may, or may not, overlap. They were not found to be connected, or part of the same transaction”.  
 
The matter was transferred by the apex court to the Delhi HC which had asked Singh to join the probe.

Singh had asked the court to quash the FIR registered under Sections 13(2) and 13(1) (e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 109 of IPC by CBI on September 23, 2015.