ACB to match IAS officer’s voice with TV show sample

With IAS officer Niraj K Pawan, accused of graft in awarding tenders under National Health Mission (NHM), refusing to give a voice samples, the anticorruption bureau (ACB) has picked several from TV shows he appeared in.

The ACB will now match the samples from the TV with those in telephonic conversations held purportedly between the IAS officer and a middle man.

The ACB had on May 13, 2017 arrested the 2003-batch IAS officer, along with a Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) officer, in a bribery case involving ₹1.5 crore. The Rajasthan government had suspended Pawan, then posted as commissioner in the agriculture department, before reinstating him in November last year. The scam took place when Pawan was posted as the additional mission director in the state’s NHM.

Pawan came under the ACB radar after a middleman Ajit Kumar Soni, who runs an event management firm, was made an accused in a case being investigated by the bureau.

A senior ACB official said 15 CDs have been prepared to collect voice samples of Pawan from TV shows that he had appeared in. The forensic science department, will match the samples with recordings of the telephonic conversation between Pawan and the middle man, Ajit Soni.

While ACB said that Pawan had refused to give voice samples, the IAS officer claimed that the bureau had contacted him two years ago when he had initially agreed to give his voice sample but later refused after he was asked to read out some “objectionable matter.”

“So this is an old matter. Since then the ACB has not contacted me. The matter of whether I am required to give voice sample is now in the high court,” he said.

Pawan came under the ACB radar only after Soni, who runs an event management firm, was made an accused in the case. The others arrested in the case include chief accountant Deepa Gupta, store keeper Joji Verghese, and RAS officer Anil Agarwal. They are charged with taking took 5% of the tender amount as bribe before allocating work under NHM and 12% before releasing the payment.

The ACB had submitted chargesheet against all the accused in July 2016. The state government has denied giving prosecution sanction for Anil Agarwal.

JAIPUR: THE ACB HAD ON MAY 13, 2017 ARRESTED THE IAS OFFICER, ALONG WITH A RAS OFFICER, IN A BRIBERY CASE INVOLVING ₹1.5 CRORE