HC orders CBI probe into Pondy university scam

PUDUCHERRY: If there is any undue delay in grant of sanction to prosecute officials under the Prevention of Corruption Act, the investigating agency should deem it as approval and register the case and initiate probe, Madras high court has ruled. Justice G Jayachandran then directed the CBI to register a case and probe a complaint of misappropriation of funds by two top officials of Pondicherry University, even though the union education department had not issued the sanction, and instead kept the CBI's request for sanction pending since October 2022.
"... S Hariharan (officiating director of the university's human resources development centre from 2008 to 2016) had bribed Gurmeet Singh, Vice-Chancellor, Pondicherry University, with ₹50 lakh to give him a clean chit to escape from the administrative action, criminal prosecution and also for full settlement of his terminal benefits... Gurmeet Singh appointed Prof P Natarajan, Department of Commerce and Prof B B Mohanty, Department of Sociology, to overlook the findings of his own Internal Audit Wing, who did not even touch any bill or voucher contained in 92 volumes of files pertaining to each of the courses and in just 2 and 3 sittings gave a clean chit report in matter of Prof S Hariharan," said Justice Jayachandran.
Justice Jayachandran, pointing out that the CBI received the complaint on February 4 last year and its scrutiny found 'incriminating materials' against the people managing the affairs of Pondicherry University, said: "Section 17A of the PC Act had been introduced by way of amendment to protect officers from malicious prosecution. If the authorities, who are supposed to accord sanction to register case, do not apply their mind and take decision within a period of 3 months or within further period of one month, extended for the reason stated, then the investigating agency should take that the sanction as deemed to have been accorded."
The CBI found that Hariharan served as the officiating director of the university's human resources development centre from 2008 to 2016 and he conducted 92 orientation and refresher courses and handled funds to a tune of ₹5 crore during the period. The finance section found that Hariharan misappropriated the funds using fake and forged bills causing a loss to the Union government to a tune of ₹2.25 crore.
The university forwarded the report submitted by the finance section to the internal audit wing led by IAO to scrutinise the findings. The officer submitted a report to the vice-chancellor declaring that ₹27 lakh was misappropriated through fake bills.