Chandigarh, March 4
Two-and-a-half years after the cash-at-judge’s-door scam rocked the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the CBI today filed a 25-page chargesheet against Justice Nirmal Yadav and four others accused in the case. The chargesheet was filed on the day when Justice Yadav was to demit office as a Judge of the Uttarakhand High Court.

It is perhaps for the first time in the region that a member of the higher judiciary has been charged in a case of corruption.

It was on March 1 that the CBI had obtained prosecution sanction from President Pratibha Patil to chargesheet Justice Nirmal Yadav in the case. The chargesheet was filed in the court of Special CBI Judge Ritu Tagore.

The CBI has nailed the five accused under Section 120B of the IPC and Sections 11 and 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The case will now come up for hearing on April 6.

Besides Justice Yadav, others named in the chargesheet are local advocate and former Haryana Additional Advocate-General Sanjiv Bansal, Delhi-based hotelier Ravinder Singh, property dealer Nirmal Singh and Rajiv Gupta. CBI sources said the name of Sanjeev Bansal’s clerk, Parkash Ram, had been placed in column number 2, indicating that he would not be proceeded against at this stage.

The Chandigarh Police first registered the case on August 13, 2008, when a packet containing Rs 15 lakh was wrongly delivered at the Sector 11 residence of Justice Nirmaljit Kaur, another judge of the high court. Nirmaljit Kaur reported the matter to the police following which it came to light that the money was actually meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav. The case was then handed over to the CBI.

The CBI also attached the three-page sanction letter issued by the President with the chargesheet. The agency said it would soon file documents related to the case. CBI Superintendent of Police RD Kalia had come from New Delhi to file the chargesheet.