Chhagan Bhujbal, son, nephew discharged in Maharashtra Sadan case

A special ACB court discharged from the Maharashtra Sadan case NCP leader and cabinet minister Chhagan Bhujbal, his son Pankaj and nephew Sameer

A special anti-corruption bureau (ACB) court on Thursday discharged from the Maharashtra Sadan scam Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and cabinet minister Chhagan Bhujbal, his son Pankaj and nephew Sameer, along with then public works department (PWD) secretary Deodatta Marathe, and employees of Bhujbal’s Mumbai Educational Trust (MET) Tanveer Shaikh, Iram Shaikh, Sanjay Joshi and Geeta Joshi.

Chhagan Bhujbal and nephew Sameer were present in the court, when the judge the order in the Maharashtra Sadan case. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

Earlier, the court had discharged five accused – Arun Deodhar, Krishna Chamankar, Pravina Chamankar, Pranita Chamankar and Prasanna Chamankar.

On Thursday, Bhujbal and Sameer were present in the court, when special ACB judge HS Satbhai pronounced its order discharging him and others from the case. Bhujbal, who wore a light blue kurta and a purple shawl, was accompanied by several bodyguards who waited at the court verandah. Bhujbal’s five to six supporters waited outside the courtroom for the leader.

Senior counsel Prasad Dhakephalkar, Sajal Yadav and Sudarshan Khawase who had appeared for the Bhujbals and had filed discharge application under section 227 of the Criminal Procedure Code had said that there was no loss to the state exchequer and all allegations made against the applicants were false based on wrong calculations, assumptions and presumptions. Despite filing a charge sheet running into thousands of pages in 2016, the agency has been unable to show sufficient evidence against the accused to frame charges and proceed with the trial.

All decisions were taken by the Cabinet Infrastructure Committee (CIC) and the meeting was headed by then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh wherein several other ministers and senior bureaucrats had also taken part. Developer KS Chamankar Enterprises was not selected by Bhujbal, but appointed by the Slum Dwellers and Slum Rehabilitation Authority, the lawyers said.

The lawyers further argued before the judge that there was no material to show that the Bhujbals got any monetary gain in the matter or that he was behind helping the developer get quantum benefits. They had argued that there is no evidence of any irregularities of corruption by Bhujbal as then state minister of the Public Works Department (PWD) and the then deputy chief minister. They had claimed there was no material to support the allegations of cheating, conspiracy and forgery.

Special public pleader Ajay Misar for the state ACB had objected to the discharge application and had told the court that the Bhujbals had received kickbacks for giving the work to KS Chamankar Enterprises. There was already a 20,000-page charge sheet filed in the matter against 14 accused.

Misar had further argued there were 14 accused in the matter, who despite being minister, bureaucrats, developers and architects had hatched a conspiracy of causing wrongful loss to the state government and wrongful gain to the developer and for that a false status report cum proposal cum feasibility report having an inappropriate calculations of prospective profits to the developer was prepared and submitted to the committee of ministers and got the proposal sanctioned by the committee in its meeting from June 5, 2006 to August 28, 2006. The committee was misled to solicit the sanction to the proposal of the developer.

Activist Anjali Damania who was also a whistleblower in the matter had also joined the case as an intervenor and had submitted her written submissions opposing the application of discharge.

While discharging the directors of KS Chamankar Enterprises, the court had observed in its previous orders in August that the ACB had registered the FIRs in a hurry. Most of the calculations in the matter were made by Narendra Talegaonkar who was the ACP with ACB; he was neither an architect nor an engineer and he was no expert to do calculations related to said matters.

The ACB had registered an FIR against all accused on June 11, 2015, much before the appointment of an architect who is an expert on such matters who was officially appointed on June 30, 2015. The architect had submitted a report on June 9, 2015, but prior to it on June 4 a sanction was asked to register an FIR in the case where points of the report were mentioned.

The court had further said that the PWD report came in December 2015, which said that there was no illegality in the contract and the feasibility report was prepared as per prevailing rules and practices followed in PWD however the FIR was already registered by then by the ACB on June 11, 2015.

Background

The case dates back to 2005 when Bhujbal was the Public Works Department (PWD) minister. The contract for the Maharashtra Sadan was allegedly given out without inviting tenders to KS Chamankar Enterprises. The ACB had registered a case in the matter in 2015 after the Bombay High Court had observed there was prima facie evidence and ACB can register FIR if a case of corruption is made out. The ACB had registered a case against 11 people alleging that a developer was favoured for a project under which an RTO land in Andheri was to be handed over for a project in lieu of construction to the tune of ₹100 crore at Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi and RTO building in Tardeo.

The ACB had filed a charge sheet in the matter in 2016 against Bhujbal and others. Bhujbal was arrested in March 2016, by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a case related to money laundering after the Maharashtra Sadan Scam. The ACB arrested Bhujbal the same month and he managed to get bail in June in the ACB case however managed to get bail in the ED case only in 2018.