Twelve persons, including one deceased, were acquitted from charges of misappropriating funds meant for RIMS on the ground of prosecution having failed to substantiate the charges leveled against them.
The Special Judge (PC Act), Imphal West on Wednesday passed an order of acquitting the 12 accused for committing the offences under Sections 120-B/409/420/467/468/477-A IPC & Sections 13 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
The prosecution had charged the 12 as they allegedly misappropriated the money meant to be deposited in the public funds by public servants. They were charged with not only cheating the hospital but for conspiring to create shortage of funds for health service in Imphal, Manipur.
It was also submitted that during the course of CBI investigation, the present director-RIMS ordered the accused persons to deposit the amount arrived at by the Income Monitoring Cell of RIMS.
The CBI submitted that the award of punishments had been served to them by the director, RIMS professor S Sekharjit Singh as per separate Memorandum (No. B/1427/89-MC) dated January 29, 2011 issued to each one of them after revocation of their suspension orders. They deposited the amount of money that they had misappropriated, and the total amount recovered during the course of the investigation by the RIMS Institute amounted to Rs 23,22,933.
The CBI filed challans against the 11 accused persons of the offence punishable under Section 120B IPC read with section 420,409,467 IPC and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1) (c) and (d) of PC Act, 1988 on November 29, 2011. It prayed the court to take cognisance for the offences committed by the accused persons with an additional prayer under Section 173(8) CrPC for further investigation and submission of supplementary charge-sheet along with the sanction order for prosecution under Section 19 (1) (c) of PC Act, 1988.
During the trial, the prosecution examined 33 witnesses and had relied on 301 documents exhibited as Ext. P-1 to Ext. P-301. The prosecution also exhibited 53 MOs as Ext. MO- 1 to Ext. MO-53.
The court after a long trial with careful examination of the materials on record and consideration of the rival submissions made at bar and analysis of relevant case laws, concluded that the prosecution has failed to substantiate the charges against the accused persons except for the deposits of the alleged misappropriated amounts by the accused. Without any corroboration, the deposits cannot be treated as admission of guilt by the accused, the court observed.
