Mumbai, May 30: CBI officers have reportedly decided to step up the pace of investigation into the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society irregularities from June and will soon be summoning some high-profile accused and witnesses, including former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, for questioning.
Chavan, who has been named one of the 14 accused in the scam, has been spared any confrontation with the CBI until now. “One by one, all the accused will questioned. The case has made strong progress and hence all the accused will be called in for questioning,” said a senior CBI officer.
According to the FIR registered by the CBI this January, Chavan, during his tenure as revenue minister, became part of the criminal conspiracy along with Adarsh Society’s general secretary R C Thakur, retired brigadier M M Wanchoo and Congress leader K L Gidwani after he allegedly wrote a letter to the trio recommending inclusion of civilians to the extent of 40 per cent in the society, initially meant for Kargil war widows and victims’ families.Along with Chavan, senior IAS officer Jairaj Phatak is also likely to be questioned soon.
“We had scheduled his questioning for last week. However, Phatak had to visit Delhi and hence we had to reschedule the questioning,” added the officer.
According to a source, most accused are been questioned collectively, with more than one accused contradicting each other. “Many of them were grilled together and we will continue to do that with other accused too,” said a source.
So far, the agency has questioned the prime accused including Thakur, Wanchoo and Gidwani. The agency has recorded statements of witnesses such as that of current Principal Secretary of the Urban Development (UD) department T C Benjamin, Chief Fire Officer and Deputy Fire Officer along with other members of Adarsh Society. Last week, the agency recorded the statement of former Mumbai joint commissioner (Traffic) Sanjay Barve and his wife Sharmila.
“Statements of important witnesses have been recorded and they support our case. Witness statements of experts from different fields have also been recorded to aide us with the technical aspects,” said an officer.
–Agencies–