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Saturday, February 2, 2013

Vigilance raids two former Power Secretaries

DD PRADHAN AND PEMA WANGCHEN BOOKED UNDER PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION ACT
GANGTOK, 01 Feb: Vigilance Police carried out simultaneous raids on two former Secretaries of the Energy and Power Department yesterday. Retired Secretaries DD Pradhan and Pema Wangchen, both of whom retired as Principal Chief Engineer cum Secretary, Power Department, have been booked by the Vigilance directorate for possession of assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. With the twin raids yesterday, Vigilance Police completes a busy week which started with a raid on Additional SP, Sikkim Jails, Kado Tshering Bhutia, on Sunday.
Both the Vigilance cases were registered on 31 January and raids conducted simultaneously on the residences of the two retired government servants.
Director Vigilance, N Sreedhar Rao, confirmed that the search operations started in the late afternoon on 31 January and continued well past midnight. Mr. Pradhan’s house at Tadong and Mr. Wangchen’s residence at Burtuk were raided by the police after obtaining search warrants from the designated Court for the Prevention of Corruption Act. It is informed that during the raid, documents relating to properties and bank accounts were seized.
They have been charged under section 13 (1) (e) of the Prevention of Corruption Act which concerns possession by a public servant of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to his known sources of income and which he cannot account for.
The cases were registered on the basis of source information alleging that both the former Secretaries were in possession of assets disproportionate to their known sources of income; it is stated that the disproportionate assets had been amassed by the accused during their tenure in government service. While Mr. Pradhan is accused in the Vigilance case to be in possession of disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs. 63 lakh, in Mr. Wangchen’s case this has been projected at Rs. 85 lakh.
However, it is also learnt that the check period in relation to the two cases is yet to be established by the investigating agency. It is informed that the source information was first verified from the field from sources and also taking into account their known sources of income and assets along with their living expenses.
Mr. Pradhan retired from service as Power Secretary in the year 2007 and was succeeded as Secretary, Power by Mr. Wangchen who retired from service in the year 2011. In fact, Mr. Wangchen had also received a one-year extension after his superannuation. Officials inform that there is no time limit [limitation] in taking cognizance of acts of corruption by government servants and it did not matter how many years a former government servant had been in retirement.

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