Adarsh missing file case: After HC rap,CBI arrests 3

“This is the first round of arrests,there are many more to come,” said a senior CBI official. “Tiwari was in 2003 elevated to the post of state Information Commissioner. The agency has been probing if Tiwari could have accessed the file during his tenure as Information Commissioner,under the pretext of disseminating information on some RTI application made and then tampered the file,” said a CBI source. Tiwari was also repeatedly questioned over the past two weeks.

According to the CBI,Raul was the last person to handle the file on November 2,2005,when it is believed to have gone missing. The FIR registered by the Urban Development department mentions only four pages missing from the file,but the CBI claims that at least 10 pages have been tampered with.

Tiwari,one of the prime accused in the case and a member in the Society,is accused of facilitating the transfer of FSI from the BEST land to Adarsh which helped the Society build to the height of 103.60 metres.

The CBI sources said they believe the alleged notings must have been made in the file during this period.

“The section that went missing dealt with change in road length to generate land for Adarsh. These papers contained the changed category from ‘road’ to ‘residential purposes’. We have found that the file was last handled by the three accused and they helped some other influential accused tamper with crucial pages,” said an officer.

The CBI was handed over the case of the missing file by the HC on February 17 after it observed that “there is a direct link between the documents pertaining to deletion of reservation for a road and Coastal Regulation Zone clearance for Adarsh and the scam”.

Earlier in the day,the High Court said it was “distressing” that the CBI had not mentioned anything about documents pertaining to road deletion and CRZ clearance in its report.

“You (CBI) should have mentioned something about the missing file in the report. That is the worst part of this case,” the court said.

To this,the CBI said the probe was on and it would apprise the court about this in its next report.

“What do you mean by that?” Justice Ranjana Desai snapped. “This is distressing. The agency needs to focus on the missing files. It is surprising that nothing in the report reflects anything about the missing files. We are unhappy.”