Supreme Court tells CBI: Probe into 1,200 cr contract of Arunachal Pradesh CM’s relatives

New Delhi: Nepotism and nepotism have no place in allocation of public resources, Supreme Court Directed on Monday industrial and commercial bank An investigation was conducted into allegations that the Arunachal Pradesh government allotted public contracts worth over Rs 1,200 crore to companies owned or controlled by close relatives of CM Pema Khandu.Noting that the CAG report pointed out various gaps in the tender decision-making process over the past 10 years, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta and NV Anjaria said the state and its agencies cannot provide benefits based on “the whim of any political or administrative official”.The court rejected all pleas raised by the state government, including that the contract in question was of small size, and said it was a case suitable for investigation by a central agency as the allegations were against the CM.The Supreme Court stated that the evidence showed that the superior was killed by a rifle with a stock number of 351, but the defendant’s rifle had a stock number of 329. It is difficult to accept the theory that the rifle was accidentally replaced 10 days before the crime.“It is unacceptable that in a highly disciplined force, the exchange of rifles assigned to two soldiers would have gone unnoticed for a period of 10 days. It is noteworthy that there is no evidence in the duty register for May 18, 2014 (the date of the incident). In the absence of other strong evidence to support this, we do not consider it safe to sustain the conviction on suspicion alone,” the judge said.“It is a well-worn law that every link in the chain of circumstantial evidence must be conclusively proven. Even a missing or weak link can have a fatal effect on the prosecution’s case. In the present case, the evidence on record does not meet the standard of proof required by the criminal law and does not exclude all reasonable presumptions consistent with the appellant’s innocence. Therefore, in our considered opinion, it (the evidence) is wholly insufficient to warrant his conviction,” the court added.