Noida authority ex-chief engineer's wife facilitated bribes?

Ghaziabad: Kusum Lata, the wife of Noida authority's former chief engineer Yadav Singh, was engaged in facilitating bribes for her husband through her private firm, says the chargesheet submitted before a court here.

According to the chargesheet, the police investigation revealed that Kusum Lata facilitated the bribes through her company M/s Kusum Garments, which had its bank account in the Oriental Bank of Commerce.

The firm facilitated the bribes from M/s Countrywide Holdings Private Limited, a firm controlled by Kusum Lata's chartered accountant Mohan Rathi.

The investigation established that in a single instant, bribe money to the tune of Rs.50 lakh was transferred by Pradeep Garg of M/s NKG Infrastructure through one of its subsidiary firms M/s Gannayak Finance and Leasing Private Limited.

Yadav Singh used to get 0.5 percent commission as bribe through her firm, it said.

On March 15, the CBI filed a chargesheet against Yadav Singh and 13 others, including his wife and former officials, on charges of corruption that caused a loss of Rs.19 crore to the government exchequer.

The chargesheet named Yadav Singh, Kusum Lata, then project engineer Ramendra, assistant project engineers Devi Ram Arya and Jai Pal Singh, junior engineers Rajeev Kumar, R.D. Sharma and Ompal Singh, Tirupati Constructions managing partner V.K. Goel, JSP Constructions partner Pankaj Jain, NKG Infrastructures managing director Pradeep Garg and the three companies under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

According to the CBI, the investigation revealed that the allotment of work was allegedly pre-decided, tender formalities were wilfully violated, estimate was highly inflated to cause undue gain to the contractor -- all of which caused a loss of Rs.19 crore to the government exchequer.