Mumbai, Jan 3 (PTI) A special court here has accepted the CBI's closure report in a case concerning alleged irregularities in the tendering process for procurement of various items to be used for the maintenance of EMU rakes, or local trains, of the Central Railway (CR).

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had in February 2022 registered a case against senior officials of CR's engineering department, including Ved Prakash (senior divisional electrical engineer), Vijay Kumar (assistant divisional electrical engineer) and six others, alleging a nexus with a few suppliers.

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Special CBI judge SM Menjonge in his order passed on Monday said that he has perused the final report of the probe agency and documents collected during the investigation.

“I am satisfied that there is no evidence against the above accused to prosecute them for the alleged offences. Hence, the closure report is accepted,” he added.

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In the first information report (FIR), the CBI had alleged that the railway officials were involved in the tendering and its acceptance process with "criminal and malafide" intentions.

The officials favoured some firms by allotting tenders and accepting lower quality materials, thereby causing corresponding wrongful gain to themselves and corresponding loss to the railways, the CBI had claimed.

As per the probe agency, the officials, who were posted at CR's Vidyavihar Store Depot and Kurla Car Shed in Mumbai, entered into a criminal conspiracy with a few suppliers and abused their positions to purchase parts at higher costs for the illegal monetary benefit of the private entities.

CBI had claimed that in the tendering process for procurement of various items to be used for the maintenance of EMU rakes at the two facilities, ambiguous descriptions of the components for non-stock purchase under “Limited Tender Category” were made.

The descriptions of the items were kept in such a manner that they could not be procured from the GeM (Government e-Market) portal and may not be understood by other suppliers, except a set of suppliers who were involved in the conspiracy, the FIR had said.

The tenders were allotted to the set of suppliers only and most of the items, which were locally made, were procured at exorbitant rates, which showed the nexus between the CR officials and those supplying them, it had added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)