Chennai: The CBI has registered a case against S Prabhakaran, an officer of the Indian Defence Estates Service (IDES), for alleged corruption during his recent tenure as chief executive officer, Cantonment Board, St. Thomas Mount.
Fourteen others have been included as accused in this case of allowing private contractors to erect illegal hoardings in a hoarding-free zone in the cantonment board area from Kathipara junction to Pallav-aram on both sides of GST road violating board norms for wrongful pecuniary benefit. Prabhakaran, who belongs to the Indian Defence Estate Services, is currently posted as Defence estate officer, Visakhapatnam.
In its FIR, the CBI says that Prabhakaran, while working as CEO of the Cantonment Board in St. Thomas Mount from July 2013 to June 2015, entered into a criminal conspiracy with several contractors to award contracts without tender, without applications in prescribed format and without application fee. CBI has slapped a case against him under IPC sections of cheating, criminal conspiracy along with prevention of corruption act and criminal misconduct.
When erecting these hoardings, 'No objection certificates' from police and highway department were not obtained. Prabhakaran gave permission to erect hoardings on state highway land over which he has no jurisdiction.
CBI alleges that no official note sheet was maintained by Prabhakaran and applications received by the accused contractors were without dates and sanctions were granted in a very casual manner without observing any of the procedures required to sanction such deals, so as to favour private contractors.
Out of 127 permissions given to erect hoardings 64 were erected, out of which 55 were in state land and 9 in cantonment land. Against his department advice, Prabhakaran had renewed the contracts for one more year.
CBI points out that apart from Prabhakaran and 14 other private parties, unknown officials of state highway department could have made wrongful pecuniary gains as they deliberately had not taken any action against illegal hoardings. Due to the wrongful acts of Prabhakaran, the cantonment board and state government had incurred a total wrongful loss of '1.5 crore and bringing corresponding gain to the suspects.
Others cited in FIR as accused are Kamesh Dyuti Ads represented by Kamesh, Ambujan Advertisement represented by M. Lakshmi, MR Communications represented by S. Ramkumar, AD Excellent represented by S Kalpanasamy, Manikandan, Latitude Media, ARTEC advertising, Sanakian, Media Junction represented by Lokesh, Aishwarya Advertisers, AGN Communication of AG Gopal, Alchemy media, Sabari enterprises represented by Baskar and AD Square.
