The Mumbai Police Crime Branchs probe into the disappearance of crucial papers from a file pertaining to the Adarsh Housing Society is expected to be soon taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),sources in the police told The Indian Express. According to sources,with the CBI registering an FIR in the Adarsh society scam against 13 accused on Saturday,the sections applied by the Crime Branch in its own case will now have to be changed. Further,the CBI will have to take over the entire investigation to avoid double jeopardy. The law of double jeopardy prevents a person from being prosecuted or punished for the same offence twice. The sections applied in the Crime Branch case are IPC Section 204 pertaining to destruction of document or electronic record to prevent its production as evidence,and Section 380 pertaining to theft. Now that an FIR has been registered by the CBI,sections pertaining to destruction of evidence as opposed to destruction of documents comes into play. Section 204 will have to be altered to Section 201 causing disappearance of evidence of offence, said an officer,who did not wish to be named. Legally,the case should soon be taken over by the CBI. It is highly unlikely that the Crime Branch case and the CBI case would progress separately,as this would amount to double jeopardy. The missing papers and their disappearance will all now fall under the ambit of the CBIs case as it is one matter in entirety, said the source. The Crime Branch has already questioned and recorded the statements of 25 to 30 officials from the Urban Development Department. Sources said the Crime Branch had set the ball rolling for four middle and junior level officials from the department,who were directly involved in the handling of the file,to be subjected to narco-analysis tests. Sources said these four officials included clerk Vidya Dhabolkar and assistant town planner Ashok Patil,who were the first two to be questioned in the case by the Crime Branch on November 30. In accordance with a Supreme Court ruling,consent for narco-analysis tests has already been obtained from the four officials,sources revealed. The Kalina Forensic Science Laboratory has also been approached for the tests,and the procedural formalities are being completed by the police,they said. According to the police,when an RTI application was filed seeking the documents,Patil had allegedly said the file was missing. Subsequently,the department had initiated a search for the file. Dhabolkar found the file,but then the notings on the file were allegedly missing.
