Suspended IAS Nirmala Meena surrenders

Suspended bureaucrat and then District Supply Officer (DSO), Nirmala Meena, surrendered before the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Wednesday. The disgraced IAS officer, who was absconding till now, arrived at the ACB office at the Arora Circle this afternoon and was taken in for questioning by the officials. She arrived wearing a scarf, which she used to cover her face.

ACB exposed Meena’s role in the allocation of additional 35,000 quintals of wheat while she was posted as the District Supply Officer of Jodhpur. Meena is being probed for undisclosed earnings, which is more than her stipulated income. She also faces charges of embezzlement. 

DIG (ACB) Ajaypal Lamba said that the agency was expecting the IAS officer to surrender after the Supreme Court rejected her anticipatory bail plea. “There was no other way left for her except to surrender before the ACB,” he said. The ACB is now mounting efforts to arrest her husband Pawan Mittal. The agency had registered a case against both the IAS officer and her spouse.  

During investigation, it was revealed that Nirmala Meena had acquired several properties during her ten-year tenure. When the ACB started scrutinizing the property documents of both the officer and her spouse, it threw up a list of nineteen immovable assets which the couple allegedly acquired over the last 10 years. The list of the properties includes bungalow, land and petrol pump. Properties were identified in Jodhpur, Jaipur and Mount Abu. Apart from this, the ACB probe had revealed fixed deposit of Rs42 lakh and 17 lakh rupees with the banks. 

Meena is charged with distributing 35,000 quintals of wheat to private flour mills by allocating it to bogus families. ACB had found in its investigation that the bureaucrat had added 33,000 new families in March 2016 and 35 thousand 20 quintals of wheat was rationed out against the said number of families following a report sent by her to the higher officials. 

According to the ACB officials, the new families were not registered online and they could not be substantiated and later “disappeared”. Meena had allegedly allocated extra wheat worth Rs8 crore through the process. Contractor Suresh Upadhyay and Swaroop Singh Rajpurohit had sent the wheat to the flour mill for processing. After the investigation, the state government suspended IAS officer Nirmala Meena. Later, the flour mill owner Swaroop Singh Rajpurohit had also admitted that he had sold 10 thousand 500 quintals of wheat dispatched in 105 trucks in the black market. 

Ajaypal Lamba said Meena had been arrested and will be quizzed soon.

Her successive anticipatory bail applications had been rejected by various courts.

Meena was wanted for alleged irregularities in the distribution of 35,000 quintal wheat meant for below poverty line (BPL) families. She allegedly sold the wheat to private flour mills as the DSO, Jodhpur in March 2016. According to Anti-Corruption Bureau, it was a scam of nearly Rs eight crore. 

After an investigation, the ACB had registered an FIR against her.

Besides the case, the ACB had also registered a separate FIR against the suspended IAS officer and her husband Pawan Mittal for allegedly possessing assets disproportionate to the known sources of income.

The Charge

ACB exposed Meena’s role in the allocation of additional 35,000 quintals of wheat while she was posted as the District Supply Officer of Jodhpur. Meena is being probed for undisclosed earnings, which is more than her stipulated income.