A special court in Delhi, under the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), has convicted and sentenced four individuals, including two former officials of the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, for their roles in a 2006 land allotment scam involving the Maharani Awanti Bai Cooperative Group Housing Society. The court handed rigorous imprisonment to Lila Krishna Seth, the former assistant registrar, and Zafar Iqbal, the former inspector grade III, with Seth receiving one year in prison and Iqbal one year and six months, along with a fine of Rs 20,000 each.
Additionally, in the same case, two private individuals, identified as Ram Narayan Aggarwal and Om Prakash Aggarwal, office bearers of the Maharani Awanti Bai Cooperative Group Housing Society, were sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment each, coupled with a fine of Rs 20,000 each. The accused were found guilty of conspiring to deceive the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) by manipulating records to secure unauthorized land allotments.
The CBI stated that the case originated on November 8, 2006, following directives from the Delhi High Court, revealing collusion between Registrar of Cooperative Societies officials and housing society members to defraud the DDA. The accused tampered with official records related to the society’s operations to obtain land allotments, leading to the filing of charges on October 22, 2007. After a lengthy trial, the court delivered the guilty verdict and corresponding sentences.
This conviction marks another success for the CBI in combating the longstanding CGHS scam. Notably, in March 2024, the court convicted a former RCS official in the Imamia CGHS case in Delhi. In a separate incident, a special CBI court in Chennai convicted DN International and its four directors in a Rs. 5.75 crore bank fraud case, sentencing the directors to five years of rigorous imprisonment and imposing fines of Rs 4 lakh each, along with a similar penalty on the company.
