Sacked minister gives documents as ‘proof’ to ACB
Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra filed a complaint on Monday with the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the 2012 water tanker scam.
Mishra met senior ACB officials, offered to be a government witness, and said he would visit the bureau again with a detailed statement and evidence against the AAP chief.
He reached the ACB headquarters around 11am and showed reporters a yellow envelope that read, “Confidential. Role of Arvind Kejriwal and his close associates in tanker scam.”
His latest moves are viewed as follow-ups to his charges that the CM had taken a ~2-crore bribe from cabinet colleague Satyendra Jain. He said he would file a CBI complaint on Tuesday.
Mishra, who was sacked as water minister, met ACB additional commissioner Alok Kumar.
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The Supreme Court revived on Monday criminal conspiracy charges against RJD chief Lalu Prasad in one of the five pending cases in the fodder scam, rejecting his plea that he cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offence.
The court ruling is seen as a big setback to the powerful regional satrap who was disqualified from Parliament and banned from contesting elections after he was convicted of corruption in 2013 in one of the biggest scams in Bihar.
He was found guilty of fraudulent withdrawals worth ₹37.70 crore from the Chaibasa treasury.
On the former Bihar chief minister’s plea, the Jharkhand high court had in 2015 quashed criminal conspiracy charges against Prasad in connection with alleged fraudulent withdrawal of ₹84.53 lakh from Deogarh treasury.
An SC bench led by justice Arun Misra set aside the HC verdict but held that each transaction was a separate case and could not be clubbed to have a joint trial.
The fodder scam rocked undivided Bihar and came to light in 1996. A CBI probe uncovered that the fraud was part of a racket to bleed more than ₹900 crore from the exchequer by showing spends for fictitious medicines and fodder for cattle.
The ruling is likely to weaken his position in Bihar, where his Rashtriya Janata Dal is in an alliance with chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and his two sons are ministers.
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