One discharged in court scam case

AJMER: A local court on Saturday discharged one of the accused while dropped charges against another in the clerk recruitment scam that took place in the district court in Ajmer. The court discharged Hitesh Sharma and dropped corruption charges against Abdul Razak. However, it framed corruption charges against court clerk Rajesh Sharma and an advocate, Hemraj Kanawat.Razak, Rajesh and Hemraj are also charged for criminal conspiracy.
The scam was exposed by the Anti Corruption Bureau on April 23. The agency filed a chargesheet running into 6,000 pages in June in which they mentioned the name of former district and sessions judge Ajay Sharda. One of the accused, advocate Bhagwan Singh Chouhan is absconding in this case.
This is the fourth setback to the ACB over the method of investigation in various corruption cases. However, all the accused, Rajesh Sharma, Hitesh Sharma, Hemraj Kanawat and middleman Abdul Razak will now be tried under sections 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (2) and 13 (2) D) of Prevention of Corruption Act along with 120B of IPC.
"The court today discharged Hitesh but framed charges under 120B of Indian Penal Code against Abdul Razak of Sarwar, charged Hemraj Kanawat under 8, 9, 12, of Prevention of Corruption Act and 120B of IPC and charged Rajesh Sharma with 8, 10, 12, 13(1) (D) and 13 (2) of Prevention of Corruption Act and 120 B of IPC," said advocate Anil Nag, Ajay Verma and Rakesh Thada of accused.
The ACB in the chargesheet stated that the investigation against former judge Sharda and advocate Chouhan was pending. They produced 185 witnesses in support of charges and disclosed that they were tracking this scam from last November and found that Kanawat was the main source in the scam. The investigating agency also produced transcript of many mobile conversation recordings.
According to the records, the court has started recruitment process for 47 UDC and 2 stenographers and the date of filing application was January 31 this year. The court administration called for written test and released the list of successful candidates in examination. These candidates were called for practical test of typing and then for interview. The court administration was preparing to announce the result in last week of April.
On April 23, ACB arrested Rajesh Sharma, a nazir in Nasirabad court, Hitesh Sharma, a clerk in lower court from their residences and seized 10.1 lakh which were collected from candidates. Another team arrested Kanawat while he was returning to Kekeri and seized 1.8 lakh from his possession. The team also seized 53,000 from the residence of Bhagwan Singh who us absconding.
The ACB interrogated former judge Ajay Kumar Sharda at ACB HQ in Jaipur after getting permission from the high court. The ACB found several lists of candidates that were seized from the possession of accused having name of candidates. The district and session court administration later rejected the selection process.