This story is from June 28, 2020

RTI Act: Haryana police register case of criminal breach of trust against unidentified public servant

RTI Act: Haryana police register case of criminal breach of trust against unidentified public servant
Representative image.
AMBALA: In connection with a case related to Right to Information (RTI) Act from the year 2018, the Ambala police on Saturday on the complaint of then Ambala city sub-division magistrate (SDM) Subash Sihag registered a case of criminal breach of trust against an unidentified public servant, after some official record from his office went missing.
On May 3, 2018, Neeraj Sharma of Mathura Nagri, Ambala City had sought certified copy of letter 739-44 dated December 2, 2010, of the office of SDM Ambala City-cum-senior public information officer (SPIO) under the RTI Act, but the same was not provided by the officials.

Following, RTI applicant Neeraj made first appeal before the first appellate authority (FAA)-cum-deputy commissioner (DC) Ambala on June 25, 2018, and the same was decided on June 23, 2018.
However, aggrieved with the decision of the FAA, Neeraj filed a second appeal 7371/2018 before the Haryana state information commission on August 28, 2018 and informed the commission that he did not receive information from the SPIO. As per the case details, SPIO informed the commission that the record about which the information is sought by applicant is missing and the relevant record is very old.
It is stated in the complaint that the commission heard the appeal and observed that record sought under RTI is of the year 2009 to 2011, which is not old, and either SPIO is concealing the record or he does not want to give the information to the applicant.
Following on December 13, 2018, the commission using the powers conferred upon it under Section 25(5) of the RTI Act, recommended that DC Ambala to look into the matter and a FIR should be registered against the person who is responsible for the mission of the record.

Notably, this case reached the office of superintendent of police (SP) Ambala for further proceedings on July 17, 2019, and a case in this regard is registered on June 27, 2020.
Following the commission instructions, on the complaint of then SDM Ambala City Subash Sihag, a case has been registered under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at Ambala City police station on Saturday.
Ambala City police station house officer (SHO) inspector Ram Kumar said, “The official concerned was communicated regarding this case, who was asked to fix the responsibility of the person responsible for missing record. But they said responsibility cannot be fixed in the matter, as the office SDM Ambala City was shifted multiple times and it is not possible to put responsibility. We will now investigate the case and see who all were posted during the tenure when the record went missing.”
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About the Author
Jaskaran Singh

Daily news reporting from the field of agriculture, farmers, crime, health, environment, education, politics, and feature articles from Ambala (with coverage of Kurukshetra & Yamunanagar).

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