Chennai court bins 13-yr-old DVAC case over shoddy probe

CHENNAI: More than 13 years after DVAC booked a corruption case against two stores officers of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board alleging that they allowed a private contractor to load excess scrap from the Ambattur office, a trial court acquitted both officials.

The agency failed to convince the court that the investigation conducted by the officer was fair and in a true spirit, the court observed in its judgement on Wednesday. Incidentally, one of the accused officers passed away in May 2021, because of which the charges abated.

DVAC’s case was that in a surprise check in February 2011, it found two lorries carrying scrap from TNEB’s Ambattur office and concluded that the private contractor was carrying 4,652 kg in excess of what was allowed as per tender. The agency accused K Srinivasan, stores officer, and G Saravanan, stores custodian of TNEB’s Chennai west stores department, of allowing this illegality which caused a loss to the government.

In the judgement, the chief judicial magistrate of Tiruvallur K Mohan was flummoxed to find that the private contractor, in whose favour the overloading was being carried out as alleged, had not been arraigned as an accused in the case. To the judge’s surprise, he had instead been produced as a prosecution witness by the agency.

The case fell flat on a crucial point — TNEB did not have any weighing scale to measure the quantity of scrap leaving its office. The regular practice was that trucks would be taken to a private office nearby to weigh the scrap. In case there was any excess loaded onto trucks, it would be brought back to the TNEB office and unloaded, the accused said in his defence, adding that there was, therefore, no case made out.

This meant the allegation that scrap in excess of what tender norms stipulated was being pilfered out fell flat, which was accepted by the judge.

The defence also pointed out that DVAC had not produced the excess scrap material or any document to indicate the quantum present at the office. The investigators conducting the surprise check had also weighed the lorry in the absence of the accused, which were contentions accepted by the judge.

In the case registered by DVAC in 2011, the agency had found substantial cash in the possession of the accused officials. But the agency did not provide any evidence to prove that the source of the cash was a bribe, the judge said.