Thaindian News

Ghaziabad, June 7 (IANS) Eighteen accused in the Ghaziabad district court provident fund scam were discharged by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court here, a lawyer said Tuesday.

CBI prosecutor Bal Karan Singh said the investigating agency filed an application and the court Monday accepted its plea to discharge 18 people against whom there was no evidence.

The CBI earlier made 75 people accused in the case but the probe agency let off 25 of them. Later, it added names of 20 fresh accused, including six former judges, in the charge sheet.

On Monday, the CBI prosecutor submitted an application containing a list of 19 accused whom it wanted to be discharged.

The court accepted the CBI request and discharged 18 people, except Sushma Asthana, wife of main accused Ashutosh Asthana.

Those discharged are: Bhuri Shankar, Tara Chand, Ved Prakash, Shakuntla, Subhash, Megha, Savita Tyagi, Ambesh Tyagi, Satpal Chaudhary, Hemendra Tyagi, Asha Sharma, Geeta, Arun Kumar Kaushik, Sheela Pal, Ritu, Amit Chaddha, Anil Garg and Poonam Agrawal.

The court earlier granted bail to six accused judges: R.P. Yadav, R.P. Mishra, R.N. Mishra, R.S. Chaubey, Arun Kumar and A.K. Singh.

About Rs.6.58 crore was fraudulently withdrawn from the provident fund accounts of class III and IV employees of the district court between 2001 and 2007.

The scam was exposed after special CBI judge Rama Jain lodged a criminal case against 70 people at Kavi Nagar police station Feb 15, 2008. No judge was, however, named in the first information report.

While Asthana, the key accused who died in Dasna Jail Nov 18, 2009, named 36 judges of Supreme Court, high courts and district courts, the apex court permitted the CBI to prosecute only six of them, now retired.