Tainted official to look after vigilance

NEW DELHI: A tainted DTC official,against whom charges of damaging crucial evidence in a corruption case arepending, has been posted as its vigilance officer. He is at present beinginvestigated in a vigilance case.R N Katyal, senior manager(mechanical), served as the vigilance officer from May 2000 to December 2001 andwas removed for his ‘‘indiscreet’’ acts during histenure.He had allegedly removed some important documents of a casein August 2000, where a depot manager in north Delhi’s Banda Bahadur Margwas caught receiving money through one of his conduits. The‘missing’ documents led to the depot manager’sexoneration.The then chief vigilance officer (CVO), N S Rana hadasked for severe action against him.One of the documents has theex-CVO N S Rana noting:‘‘A regular vigilance case can be registeredfor the missing documents deleted by the vigilance Officer (R N Katyal) and theinquiry can be completed.’’A perusal of the case file— a copy of which is in possession of The Times of India reveals thatvigilance officials had taken serious note of the case of missing documents fromKatyal’s custody.Vigilance officer (VO) N Gautam, who handledthe case after Katyal was removed in December 2001, had noted:‘‘Thecase property containing 14 pages in the correspondence portion aremissing.’’ The property included correspondence between DTC and CBI,DTC and CVC.Describing the case as ‘‘seriousaffair’’, Rana had demanded a ‘‘criminal case to belodged for such missing property.’’ Rana left DTC in late 2002 butthe case wasn’t registered.Gautam had alsonoted:‘‘A scrutiny of the records reveal that officials have made afresh numbering of the pages in the correspondence portion from ‘1’onwards, though the previous numbering on it is encircled as‘15’.’’ To this, Rana, who is presently posted as JointCommissioner of Police (programme implementation) had said:‘‘Thisagain indicates manipulation of official records with a malafide intention ofconcealing criminal offence.’’Despite such scathingremarks in the files, no action was taken against Katyal, who was then seniormanager (mechanical). Instead, soon after new CVO A S Khan took over, N Gautamwas removed and Katyal was brought in as the new vigilanceOfficer.Katyal, however, denies the allegations. Hesaid:‘‘One should not go by false complaints. They canbe misleading. Evidence can be fabricated’’. DTC chairman A J SSahney also washed off his hands:‘‘Katyal’s name wasrecommended by the CVO. When he clears someone’s name, he must haveconsidered his past record.’’