High court dismisses Haryana IAS officer Vijay Dahiya’s anticipatory bail plea
Dahiya, who was posted as the commissioner and secretary of the Haryana skill development department in Panchkula, was booked on April 20 after the arrest of a woman, who allegedly acted as a facilitator to get bills cleared in lieu of money collected on his behalf
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of Haryana IAS officer Vijay Singh Dahiya in a corruption case.
The judgment on the plea, filed on May 19, was pronounced by the bench of justice Gurvinder Singh Gill.
The detailed order is awaited.
Dahiya, who was posted as the commissioner and secretary of the Haryana Skill Development department in Panchkula, was booked on April 20 after the arrest of a woman, who allegedly acted as a facilitator to get bills cleared in lieu of money collected on his behalf.
Also read: Jang-e-Azadi memorial probe: Give questions about probe in writing, HC tells Punjab vigilance
A case under Sections 7 and 7A of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Sections 384 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code was registered on April 20 on the complaint of Rinku Manchanda of Fatehabad, who had claimed that he was running an educational institution and imparting computer training besides running classes for AC technicians and beauty parlour.
For the work, the Haryana Skill Development department had to pay bills amounting to ₹50 lakh to him and ₹5 lakh was being demanded to clear these bills. At least ₹2 lakh was recovered from the woman by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), when she was caught.
In his plea, Dahiya, a 2001-batch Haryana cadre IAS officer, stated that he was falsely implicated in the case due to “motivated considerations”. The trap was laid for the woman and he had nothing to do with it. She was then asked to contact the petitioner under a second trap before she was taken to a café in Chandigarh, the plea claimed, adding that she met him, but the ACB’s attempt to implicate him failed.
“In fact, the petitioner has been implicated merely for the reason that he is known to co-accused Poonam Chopra and by manipulating this acquaintance, the prosecution attempted to concoct a story that the petitioner is also an accused in the case,” the plea argued.
A Panchkula court had dismissed his anticipatory bail plea on May 3, observing that prima facie there appeared “active complicity” of Dahiya in the alleged offences.
Opposing the bail to the IAS officer, the ACB submitted that an official with youth empowerment and entrepreneurship department has confessed to having collected ₹13 lakh in bribe on Dahiya’s instructions from training providers. It was submitted by the ACB that it wants Dahiya’s custodial interrogation to recover the ₹13 lakh.
Meanwhile, the high court issued a notice to the Haryana government on Friday on a fresh plea from Dahiya, wherein he has sought quashing of a criminal case against him. He has argued that before the registration of the criminal case, a sanction from the competent authority was not taken as mandated under the Prevention of Corruption Act-1988.
His counsel had cited a reported letter to the anti-corruption bureau director general from the Haryana chief secretary in this case wherein the CS had asked on May 26 why the requisite permission under Section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act was not sought in this case.
On the other hand, state’s additional advocate general Deepak Sabharwal had submitted that in the case, in hand permission was not required as “accepting bribe cannot be termed as discharging an official duty, therefore 17 A of the PC Act was not attracted in the case”. The court has sought response from Haryana by August 21.