Gorakhpur school principal booked in assets case

GORAKHPUR: Principal of Saint Andrews’ College JK Lal, who had made a police complaint against 40 Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) workers for barging into the school campus and beating up the staff on July 17, has been booked in a case related to disproportionate assets.

The disproportionate assets case has been lodged on the basis of six-year old complaint by one Satya Prakash Nishad, resident of Sidharthanagar. Nishad had written to additional director (AD) vigilance accusing the principal of amassing huge wealth against his known sources of income.

Since then the vigilance department had been probing the case and during the four years of investigations the charges have been found to be true, claimed a vigilance department official. A final report in the probe was sent to the government on March 23, 2018.

On Thursday, after due approval from the state government, inspector vigilance Raj Hans Shukla got the case registered at the Cantonment police station under various sections of prevention of corruption act.

“The probe is underway and the accused will also be grilled,” said SP vigilance Kush Saurabh. Lal, meanwhile, has denied the charges. “Charges are absolutely baseless. I hope the truth will come out,” he said.

ABVP activists had barged into the school campus to hand over a memorandum to the principal on July 17. They had allegedly manhandled the staff.

The principal had then submitted a complaint against them and college was closed for three days as staff had gone on strike demanding action against the ABVP workers.