Friday, 14 June 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday questioned several people in its Vasant Vihar office in Dehradun in the alleged scam in the Horticulture department. The CBI reportedly questioned 26 people, including the former director of the department HS Baweja and the former chief horticulture officer of Nainital, Rajendra Kumar Singh, as per the official sources.
These 26 people also included departmental officers from Uttarakhand besides nurseries from Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. They were questioned from the morning till late evening on Thursday. The official sources informed that the CBI has formed 12 teams to investigate this case. They have also conducted searches at more than 20 places in the three States. These places include hideouts of the accused in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Nainital, Ranikhet, Dehradun, Tehri, Uttarkashi and Chamba, among other places in Uttarakhand.
The official sources said that the CBI has collected various important documents from the properties of officials and employees involved in the scam and will probably make some arrests in the case soon. The matter came to light when in 2022, a PIL in the Uttarakhand High Court alleged the scam in the department worth several crores. According to the petitioner, the senior officials of the department have allegedly misappropriated funds during the procurement of saplings and plantation drives in the State. The department allegedly obtained fruit saplings from Jammu and Kashmir on the same day they issued the work order and hastily made the payment.
Alleging that the officials in question also engaged in several other financial irregularities, the petitioner requested an investigation by the CBI or any independent agency. An SIT was formed to investigate that matter but after objections from the petitioner and others, the case was transferred to the CBI last year.
