CBI has filed the charge sheet in Mumbai’s Adarsh Housing Society scam naming a total of 13 accused. The 10,000-page charge sheet filed in the Court of Special Judge, Mumbai names former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan as one of the accused along with several army officials and bureaucrats.
The accused have been charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating and under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Benami Transactions Act. The charge sheet has been filed nearly 18 months after the First Information Report was filed. CBI today said that benami transactions in the case were still under investigations and the agency might file a supplementary chargesheet in due course of time.
The other accused named in the chargesheet include Brig (retd) M M Wanchoo, Major Generals T K Kaul and A R Kumar, Colonels T K Sinha and R Bakshi. Besides society members R C Thakur, P V Deshmukh, Subhash Lala and Pradeep Vyas; ex-Congress MLC K L Gidwani, IAS officer Jairaj Phatak, former CIC Ramanand Tiwari have also been named in the charge sheet.
CBI has charged Ashok Chavan with approving additional Floor Space Index for the housing society during his tenure as the Chief Minister. Apart from dealing with files pertaining to the ownership of land, CBI further accused Chavan of illegally approving allotment of 40 per cent of flats for civilians in the housing society, originally meant for defence personnel.
Talking to reporters in Mumbai, Ashok Chavan on Wednesday said that the Adarsh issue has been blown out of proportion. Terming the CBI charge sheet as unfortunate and unexpected; Mr. Chavan said that his political rivals are trying to implicate him in the case. Mr. Chavan said that Adarsh is only an administrative matter and reiterated that he was not associated with allotment of land to Adarsh society.
Mr. Chavan added that he had full faith in judiciary and was confident of emerging out of this case as innocent and unscathed.
Speaking to reporters, Maharashtra Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavan said that the charge sheet has surprised him too. He added that the state government has always maintained that it had not asked for a CBI probe, as the land on which the 31-storeyed controversial building stands belonged to the Maharashtra government
On the other hand, BJP has demanded a thorough probe into the role of other Congress leaders. Clearly pointing fingers at former Maharashtra Chief Ministers Sushil Kumar Shinde and Vilasrao Deshmukh, Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Eknath Khadse said that all those who have handled Adarsh files and gave permissions should also be probed.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Bombay High Court allowed the Ministry of Defence to intervene in the PILs in the Adarsh scam. The division bench of Justice S A Bobade and Justice Mridula Bhatkar directed the Ministry of Defence to file an affidavit within two weeks in response to the Maharashtra government's stand that CBI cannot probe the Adarsh case.
The Court allowed the Ministry to have access to all the related documents and adjourned the hearing till 18th July.
