BHOPAL: Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh was slapped with an arrest warrant by a Bhopal court on Friday for alleged fraudulent recruitments in Assembly when he was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. The court of additional district judge Kashi Nath Singh issued the warrant against former CM, who was made accused for alleged fraud while holding office as a public servant. Next hearing of the case has been scheduled for March 14.
Ajay Gupta, counsel for Digvijaya Singh requested the court to grant time since Singh was unable to appear in court. However, public prosecutor Anand Tiwari pleaded that arrest warrant should be issued against the accused.
Finding reasons cited by Singh's counsel as insufficient, court rejected his plea and ordered an arrest warrant against the former CM.
Charge-sheet submitted by police in court states that Singh is accused of making fraudulent appointments of several people, including Badri Prasad, Satya Narayan Sharma, Kamlakant Sharma, Arun Tiwari, Sharad Dwivedi, Sudhir Tiwari, Anil Mishra, Kuldeep Pandey, Sukramani Pandey, Yagya Narayan Mishra, Ramesh Tiwari, Yogesh Mishra and Sushma Dwivedi in the state legislature.
Appointments were mostly made on ad-hoc basis as personal staff to then Speaker Srinivas Tiwari by setting aside norms and later sent on deputation to other departments, where their services were merged as regular staff, the chargesheet said.
In some cases like those of Kuldip Pandey, Pradeep Mishra and Ramesh Tiwari, Singh made note-sheets on March 22, 1997, August 29, 1997 and September 19, 2001, respectively for merging services of these people in other departments instructing to set aside rules.
Of 8 accused, who were charge-sheeted by police on Friday, five - Ashok Chaturvedi, Ramashankar Mishra, Sushma Dwivedi, Yogesh Mishra and Kuldip Pandey - are already on bail and two accused - KK Kaushal and AK Pyasi - were granted bail after arrest. An FIR was registered against Singh and 19 others on February 27 in 2015 on the basis of a complaint lodged by assembly deputy speaker Shyam Lal Maithil at Jehangirabad police station of Bhopal district.