?Long arm? fails to catch guilty LDA engineer

THE LONG arm of the law is obviously not long enough when it comes to bringing a tainted LDA engineer to book. Or what else prevents the sleuths of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) from laying their hands on this particular engineer, an accused wanted by them in not one but two cases of fraud and cheating.

THE LONG arm of the law is obviously not long enough when it comes to bringing a tainted LDA engineer to book. Or what else prevents the sleuths of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) from laying their hands on this particular engineer, an accused wanted by them in not one but two cases of fraud and cheating.

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“We have completed our inquiry but are unable to take action against the man because of instructions from the top notch to proceed in the matter till further orders,” revealed an officer of the investigating agency. Here’s more. “A very senior police officer rang up and asked me to go slow in the matter when my men tried to nab this fellow in a different case of land compensation fraud recently,” said another senior of the organisation.

So, if a senior police officer came to executive engineer Vivekanand Singh’s rescue in the first instance, a veteran Samajwadi Party leader (a Member of Parliament) stepped into provide him a breather in the second. The SP MP in question wrote to the Chief Minister requesting that the proceedings in the matter be stayed following which directives from the Home Department were issued on January 6, 2005, according to sources.

It’s been almost two years ever since. The probe has been scuttled; the report is gathering dust. Reminders to the government seeking sanction to prosecute the ‘guilty’ have drawn a blank. Not surprising, therefore, while Singh goes about his job as usual, a poor ‘amin’ Hari Prasad Gupta, also one of the accused in the case, was picked up from his residence by the EOW guys on November 25.

Singh along with seven others has been indicted by the EOW in a compensation case in LDA’s Sitapur Road Housing Scheme in which payment of over Rs 11 lakh was made against fictitious properties shown on land acquired by the development agency. The case (number 144/2000) was registered on May 12, 2000. Other accused in the matter include one Nirmohan Singh (to whom compensation was paid) two special land acquisition officers, namely, Jagdish Chandra Lohmi and Mohd Mustafa and Abdur Rahman Siddiqui, Balram Nath, Ram Saharey and Deobachan, all clerks.

The second compensation fraud case involving Singh and others relates to Kanpur Road Housing Scheme.