Finally, ACB has lodged FIR against former PHED minister Mahesh Joshi in the alleged Rs 900 crore Jal Jeevan Mission scam. The agency has also booked 21 people including government senior officials and contractors working in JJM.
The agency is said to have not found anything suspicious about then additional chief secretary PHED Subodh Agrawal, who was investigated by Enforcement Directorate (ED) last year. The ED had also not found anything substantial to frame Agrawal, who is now serving as director general Indira Gandhi Panchayatiraj and gramin Sansthan.
Contractors used fake certificates to win contracts
The ACB has filed FIR against JJM financial advisor Sushil Sharma, then chief engineers Ram Karan Meena and Dinesh Goyal, additional chief engineer Arun Srivastava, Paritosh Gupta and Ramesh Chand Meena, superintendent engineer Niril Kumar, Vikas Gupta, Mahendra Prakash Soni, Bhagwan Sahay Jajoo, Jitendra Sharma and managing executive engineer Vishal Saxena.
The ACB, on August 7, 2023, had already arrested PHED executive engineer in Behror Maya Lal Saini, Pradeep, contractor Padam Chand Jain and his supervisor Malket Singh. The agency had also arrested middleman Praveen Kumar.
Then following the leads and trails given by these arrested accused, ACB has found substantial evidence against former PHED minister Mahesh Joshi and other senior officials. The agency has also lodged FIR against owner of Ganpati Tubewell Mahesh Mittal, owner of Shyam Tubewell Padam Chand Jain who are accused of winning contracts on the basis of fake experience certificates.
A close accomplice of Mahesh Joshi Sanjay Badaya is already under judicial custody in this scam.
According to ACB, the investigation with PHED executive engineer of Behror Maya Ram Saini revealed that there had been large scale corruption in JJM.
Contractors Mahesh Mittal and Padam Chand Jain had prepared fake experience certificates and documents related to IRCON International Limited to win contracts in connivance with senior engineers of PHED.
Email I'ds led ACB to crack the circuit
The ACB traced down the email i'ds used in getting the contracts. Most of these email ids were created by Mukesh Pathak.
The ACB had found some email i'ds suspicious mukeshpathakircon@gmail.com, ircon.mdwp@gmail.com, irconmdwp@gmail.com, ircon.mdwp3@gmail.com, mukeshpathak.ipbtl@gmail.com, devindragehlot@gmail.com.
After investigation it was found that the recovery mail and mobile number of email ids – mukeshpathakircon@gmail.com, ircon.mdwp3@gmail.com, mukeshpathak.ipbtl@gmail.com belonged to Mukesh Pathak. The agency investigated Pathak and found involvement of officials in this scam.
The BuckStopper, run by a group of seasoned journalists, holds the powerful accountable. The buck stops with them, as they cannot shrug off their official responsibilities.
