Cooperative Dept Recruitment Graft: Lucknow Bench Of HC Declines To Quash FIR Against Hiralal Yadav

Lucknow, Jul 5: The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has declined to grant relief to ex-managing director of Uttar Pradesh Cooperative Bank Limited, Hiralal Yadav, who had filed a plea challenging the FIR against him in a case of alleged corruption during appointments to the Cooperative Department. The bench passed the order on a writ petition seeking quashing of the FIR registered by an SIT on October 27, 2020, against Yadav. The FIR alleged cheating and forgery in the recruitment to assistant manager and assistant manager (computer) posts in 2014-15.

Additional government advocate Meera Tripathi opposed Yadav’s plea arguing that a number of corruption complaints in the recruitment process were received in the office of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Following the complaints, an inquiry was entrusted to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) which found that the petitioner was responsible for deciding the educational qualification for 10 posts contrary to rules and as such it cannot be said that he was innocent, Tripathi said. Considering the allegations levelled against Yadav in the FIR and the materials brought on record in the probe, a bench of Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice V K Srivastav said, “It cannot be said that no prima facie case is made out against the petitioner, rather there appears to be sufficient ground for investigation in the matter.” Dismissing the petition, the bench said it did not find any substance in the plea and accordingly it did not find any justification to quash the FIR.

Yadav had earlier challenged the FIR before the Allahabad High Court which granted him interim protection from arrest. Taking help of the interim relief, other co-accused in the case — Ravikant Singh, Ram Jatan Yadav and Santosh Kumar and Rakesh Kumar Mishra — also got interim protection from arrest. However, the High Court dismissed Yadav’s plea saying that since SIT had registered FIR at Lucknow, the writ petition could not be filed at Allahabad and he was given the liberty to approach the Lucknow bench. Following this, Yadav filed a fresh petition before the Lucknow bench.

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