Court closes 32-year-old DA case against ex-IAS officer nearing 90

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has closed a disproportionate assets (DA) case against a former IAS officer after 32 years of trial, noting that the accused was about 90 years of age and of unstable and unsound mind.

Special Judge (Prevention of Corruption Act) Anil Antil closed the case against Surender Singh Ahluwalia, who was posted as chief secretary to the Nagaland government, declaring him “unfit to stand trial”.

The judge said truth remains hidden in the shadows of injustice “when the system fails”. “This is the entire story and fate of the case at hand,” he said in an order passed on July 12. The judge said that by this time, Ahluwalia, the main accused, now aged about 90 years, “became unstable and of unsound mind and was declared unfit to stand trial ( trial against him already stands adjourned indefinitely)”.

He said delay by any stakeholder cog in the dispensation of the criminal justice system, be it by the investigating agency or the unscrupulous devices adopted by an accused, not only cause miscarriage of justice but becomes an instrument of inflicting a fatal blow on the efforts of justice dispensation.

The judge noted that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had cited 327 witnesses. Out of these, 48 were shown to be residing at temporary addresses like hotels and guest houses, and the agency was well aware that they would never be available for deposition, he said. “Remaining 200 witnesses had either expired or left the address or due to their ailments were in incapacity to appear and depose before the court. So, at the end, only 87 witnesses were examined including the substituted witnesses during this inordinate long period of trial commencing from the year 1992, when the charge sheet was filed, i.e. about 32 years,” the judge noted. According to the CBI, while serving in different capacities in Nagaland and New Delhi, Ahluwalia acquired assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.

The CBI had alleged that he amassed assets worth around Rs 68 lakh beyond his known sources of income as on March 28, 1987. It alleged that he acquired the assets by corrupt or illegal means and by abusing his official position as a public servant in conspiracy with other co-accused.

The judge said, “The case at hand is a classical example wherein justice has become casualty not only to the protracted trial, but also to the deliberate lapses and to the perfunctory, shoddy investigation on the part of the Agency, wherein it seems that from day one the Agency never intended to take the case to its logical conclusion. And, Why So?”

The FIR in the case was lodged on March 24, 1987 and the charge sheet was filed on April 10, 1992. The judge described the crime as “calibrated and planned,” involving the use of fictitious or non-existent individuals to acquire properties through “layering of ill-gotten money” without consent. Inderjeet Singh, Ahluwalia’s younger brother, was acquitted due to insufficient prosecution evidence.

The judge ordered the confiscation of several south Delhi properties deemed benami, as Inderjeet Singh claimed no knowledge or legal interest in them.. Several other co-accused died during the pendency

of the trial.