ITANAGAR, 4 Sep: The Chakma Displaced Family Justice Demand Committee (CDFJDC) said that it has submitted copies of a memorandum to the governor, the chief minister, the chief secretary and the director general of police, seeking “interventions against the efforts of the Special Investigation Cell (SIC) to give a clean chit to the accused in the Rs 27.51 crore rehabilitation scam by not investigating the main allegation of the complaint, ie, not transferring the rehabilitation funds into the accounts of the displaced victims, as required by law.”
“The SIC had on 6 September, 2022 registered an FIR [u/s 120 (B)/406/409/420 of the Indian Penal Code, r/w Section 13 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act],” the
committee informed in a release on Monday, adding that it had “filed complaints with the SIC against the project officials and leaders of the Chakma Rehabilitation and Resettlement Committee (CRRC), established by the project administrator, ie, Sadhan Kusum Chakma, author Paritosh Chakma from Mizoram, Bijoy Ranjan Chakma, Sambhasur Chakma, Dharma Chakma, and others.”
“In its latest status report, while giving a clean chit to the accused persons, the SIC concluded that ‘the main issue is to ascertain whether commensuration of quality of works executed through the CRRC with the sanction funds of R&R exist on the ground,'” the CDFJDC said.
Quoting from its memorandum, the committee stated that “the first operative paragraph of our complaint categorically states that ‘under Sections 31 (2) (b) and 77 (1) of the Right to Fair Compensation & Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act of 2013, the compensation award shall have to be transferred/deposited into the bank account of each beneficiary.”
“The compensation for the standing assets (like agriculture, horticulture, etc) was deposited into the bank account of each of the 156 displaced families in February 2019, but in February 2020, when the time came to transfer the rehabilitation and resettlement amount to 156 families, Rs 18,20,23,8561 was transferred into the bank account of the CRRC, which was created by the deputy commissioner-cum-administrator for the rehabilitation and resettlement of project-affected persons. But not a single paisa was transferred into the bank account of any of the beneficiaries,” it said.
“However, one year after the registration of the FIR, the SIC has refused to investigate this particular aspect, even though the bank statements of the CRRC with the Punjab National Bank, Itanagar branch, will reveal the truth as to whether the payments were made into the bank accounts of the displaced victims or not, as required by the LARR Act.
“This investigation is not being done with the sole aim to give a clean chit to the accused,” said CDFJDC president Koruna Sindhu Chakma.
The committee also highlighted “various aspects of the SIC trying to give a clean chit to all the accused, such as justifying the unilateral cancellation of expression of interest for the contract worth Rs 18.20 crore to build the houses and awarding the same to the CRRC without any tender; covering the criminal acts of the CRRC office bearers of changing the entire DPR specifications of the residential structures admittedly without prior approval from any competent authority as an act of good faith; and further justifying spending Rs 7.20 crore to clear the project site in anticipation of the proposed visit of the prime minister, though the PM was admittedly not scheduled to visit the project site.”
The CDFJDC threatened to approach the high court – and the Supreme Court, if necessary – “if clean chit is given to the accused by the SIC without investigating whether the rehabilitation funds were transferred into the accounts of the victims or not.”