SC reserves judgment on shifting of PF scam case to Delhi

The Supreme Court has reserved verdict on an application filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation for transfer of the trial of the multicrore Provident Fund scam case from the CBI court, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, to a CBI court in Delhi.

Several judges were named in the 2001-08 scam in which crores of rupees were fraudulently withdrawn from the PF accounts of class III and IV employees.

A bench comprising justices DK Jain, VS Sirpurkar and GS Singhvi reserved the judgment on the issue of shifting of the trial, which had been stayed since 28 July. The bench also discharged Ghaziabad district judge Vishnu Chandra Gupta, expressing satisfaction with his explanation that he did not in anyway interfere in the trial.

The bench accepted the reasons given by the present district judge of Ghaziabad, who was asked to respond to CBI's allegation of interference by him in the prosecution.

Earlier, during the day, attorney general G E Vahanvati had told the Supreme Court that the involvement of as many as 30 judges in the multi-crore provident fund scam had shaken the confidence of people in the judiciary. The attorney general was making a case in favour of the CBI's application seeking transfer of the trial from Ghaziabad to Delhi.

"If there is a case in the last two or three years which has shaken the confidence of people in judiciary, it is this case," the AG told the SC adding that since the six accused district judges, including three who later become judges of the Allahabad high court, and witness judges officiated at some point of time in Ghaziabad, it needed to be shifted to Delhi to make the proceedings free from any doubt.