PF scam: Prashant Bhushan writes to Allahabad HC CJ, CJI

NEW DELHI: Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan has written a letter to Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court seeking his immediate intervention in the Ghaziabad PF scam case to drop recovery proceedings against service providers given clean chit by CBI or made approvers.

The CBI had chargesheeted some judicial officers, staff and around 10 service providers in the case.

In a letter to Allahabad HC Chief Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, also marked to CJI Justice H L Dattu, Bhushan has claimed that the service providers, who had allegedly provided services like luxury cabs, mobile phones, cutlery, dresses etc to some judges, are being asked to return the amount they allegedly received for these services, seven years after the scam came to light.

"This recovery is being attempted seven years after the scam came to light and everyone realized that money has been embezzled from GPF accounts," the letter said.

"This recovery is being attempted without any judicial finding of their guilt or without any recovery suit being filed. Thus, this amounts to an apparent attempt to harass the service providers, who have either been given clean chit by CBI or who have been pardoned and made approver by the CBI Court.

"I request you to intervene and use your office, in order to see that the process of justice is not subverted in this case that involves a scam involving the judiciary. The recovery proceedings against the service providers must be immediately dropped," Bhushan said in the letter, adding that the service providers had already deposited the amount in the court that they had allegedly received from the GPF fund.

The letter has claimed that these service providers were granted bail by a special CBI judge on the condition of depositing this amount, which they had complied with.

They were later discharged in the case and moved a plea seeking refund of the amount deposited by them, which was "inexplicably rejected".

Bhushan has also sought removal/transfer of the special CBI judge saying "he has a conflict of interest having dealt with recovery proceedings on administrative side. Evidence recorded by him be scrapped and recorded afresh by a new judge."

"The 10 service providers chargesheeted by the CBI had provided most credible evidence about the scam and the agency made all such persons as their 'approvers' and the Special Judge, CBI Court granted pardon to them while making them approver under Section 306 CrPC," he said.