The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has in the past week repeatedly questioned former state Information Commissioner Ramanand Tiwari in the case pertaining to documents found missing from the Adarsh Housing Society file. The agency is probing if Tiwari,who was Principal Secretary (Urban Development Department) in 2003,could have accessed the file during the period when he served as Information Commissioner in relation to a Right to Information query and if he was involved in removing crucial documents from the file,said a senior CBI official. Tiwari confirmed he had been called for questioning,but said he had no role in tampering the file. Tiwari,one of the accused in the Adarsh scam and a member of the society,is accused of facilitating the transfer of FSI from the BEST land to Adarsh Society,which helped the society raise the height of the building to 103.60 metres. Tiwari,along with another accused Subhash Lala (then Principal Secretary to the Chief Minster),is accused of allegedly issuing letters that misguided the MMRDA on various issues in the development of the plot. It is during this period that the alleged notings must have been made in the file 154/99,said a CBI official. The section that went missing dealt with the change in the road length to generate land for Adarsh. These papers contained the changed category from road to residential purposes. Although the UDD in its FIR mentions only four missing pages,at least 10 pages of the notings annexed to file 154/99 have gone missing, the CBI official said. Tiwari,who served as Information Commissioner since 2008,was suspended after his name appeared on the list of accused in the scam,including former CM Ashok Chavan. Tiwari said he was questioned three times last week. I have no idea what the CBI is trying to prove. I served at the UDD from 2003 to 2008 and only then went to the RTI posting. No such missing file complaint was filed then. People can say anything,I have no role to play in it, he said. Other people to be questioned so far by the agency in the missing documents case are desk officers of the UDD desk XII Gurudutt Vajpe,clerk Vidya Dabholkar and Waman Raul,a clerk in Tiwaris office,who handled the file last on November 2,2005,and one Rajendra Naik,the custodian of the file from which four pages of correspondence went missing. The CBI,which is probing the Adarsh scam,was also handed charge of the missing documents case by the Bombay High Court after it observed that there was a direct link between the documents pertaining to the deletion of reservation for a road and Coastal Regulation Zone clearance for Adarsh Society and the scam. The case,originally registered by the Mumbai Police,was later handed over to the Crime Branch,which carried out the initial probe.
