CBI books deputy legal adviser for allegedly forging senior officer’s signature in appraisal reports
Beena Raizada is accused of committing fraud on annual performance reports from 2014 to 2016 to secure a promotion.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has booked one of its deputy legal advisers for allegedly forging the signature of a senior officer on annual performance appraisal reports to secure a promotion, The Hindu reported on Tuesday.
The agency filed a First Information Report against Beena Raizada on Monday on charges of cheating and forgery. She works at the bureau’s Anti Corruption-VI (Delhi) unit, which handles the Vyapam scam cases. Raizada joined the agency at its Patna office as a senior public prosecutor in May 2014 and was promoted to her current post following year. She was transferred to Delhi in January 2017, Hindustan Times reported.
According to the FIR, Raizada forged the signature of VK Singh, the former deputy inspector-general and chief of the anti-corruption branch in Patna, in her appraisal reports for 2014, 2015 and 2016. During a preliminary inquiry, Singh denied he had signed the reports. Singh said Raizada was on leave for 90 days during 2014-’15 and there was “no question of [him] writing an assessment in her favour”, the agency said.
Singh said he returned to Rajasthan in 2015 and could not have signed Raizada’s assessment report for 2016, according to the FIR. The annual appraisal report of an officer at Raizada’s rank is signed by a joint director and not a deputy inspector general, he added.
“She has been booked under sections of cheating, forgery and using forged documents as genuine and fraudulently committing documentary mischief,” an unidentified CBI officer told The Telegraph.