CBI’s Deputy Legal Advisor (DLA), Ms. Beena Raizada has been charged by the agency for committing the offence of cheating and forgery by allegedly forging the signatures of her senior, V.K. Singh, in her annual performance assessment reports (APARs) for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 to get favourable promotion.
She has been charged under Sections 417 r/w 511, 468, 471 and 477 of Indian Penal Code, 1860, for the offences of cheating, forgery, use of bogus documents as genuine and fraudulently committing mischief of documents.
The FIR was filed by the investigating agency after a preliminary enquiry was conducted by its Deputy Superintendent of police (DSP), Ashish Prasad whose report claimed that there was ‘interpolation in assessment notes’ submitted by Ms. Raizada.
On May 5, 2014, Ms. Raizada had joined CBI as a Senior Public Prosecutor following which she was promoted to the post of Deputy Legal Advisor (DLA) on November 17, 2014. On January 5, 2017, she was transferred to Delhi AC- VI unit, which is probing Vyapam scam.
She submitted three annual performance assessment reports (APARs) for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 in the office of Directorate of Prosecution (DoP) personally, bearing the signatures of Mr. V.K. Singh, the then CBI officer in ACB, Patna. The three APARs certified her performance as ‘excellent’.
In the preliminary enquiry, Mr. Singh told the CBI that though the signature in the assessment notes resembles his signature, he had not signed any of them. He further added that there was no question of writing assessment report in her favour since she was off duty for 90 days during 2014 and 2015. Also, for the report of the year 2016, he was already repatriated to his parent department in 2015 and thus he was not a competent person to sign the assessment report.
The responsibility of further investigating the case has been entrusted to ASP Sandeep Chaudhary.
