Sundargarh: A Special Vigilance Court has acquitted Rakesh Kumar Agarwal, a 1999 batch Odisha Administrative Service (OAS) officer, in a two-decade-old disproportionate assets (DA) case.
The court found that contrary to State Vigilance Wing’s chargesheet, his salary was more than his assets, Times of India reported.
A case was registered against Agrawal on August 22, 2007, when he was the tehsildar of Bargarh. The allegation was that he possessed disproportionate assets worth Rs 23.55 lakh. Based on it, a chargesheet was filed against him on August 30, 2013.
Special Judge (Sundargarh) Rajalaxmi Pattanayak found that Agarwal had a total income of Rs 37.72 lakh which was Rs 10.71 lakh more than his expenditure of Rs 9.30 lakh and value of assets (Rs 17.69 lakh) during the probe period from 2003-2007.
In her recent verdict, the Special Judge on April 20 said that it was clear that the accused had acquired no assets disproportionate to his known sources of income during the period.
“I step to the firm conclusion that prosecution has miserably failed to establish the charge under Section 13 (2) and 13 (1)(c) of Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act 1988 against the accused. Accordingly, the accused is acquitted of the charge and is discharged from bail bond,” the Judge declared.
Agarwal is at present Deputy Secretary in the Labour and ESI department of the government of Odisha.
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