‘PDS scam is conspiracy against government’

Almost a year after the alleged multi-crore public distribution system scam rocked Chhattisgarh, a senior IAS officer, an accused in the reported scandal, has for the first time broken his silence on the matter, describing the “whole exercise of exposing the corruption” by ACB as a “conspiracy” to tarnish the image of the Raman Singh government. The ACB of the Chhattisgarh police, which claimed to have unearthed the scam, had deliberately planted false information with media and created a hype that it is a scandal running into several hundred crores involving chief minister Raman Singh, some of his ministerial colleagues and senior officers, joint secretary in the state government Anil Tuteja said in a letter to Mr Singh. A copy of the letter written in Hindi is in possession of this newspaper. The letter has also been circulated among IAS officers of the state, pleading them to raise their voice against the injustice meted out to Mr Tuteja to prevent further victimisation of any of the member of their fraternity. He demanded a high-level probe to find out the motive behind the move.

“Move to tar the image” of the state government.“Evidences were manufactured with fake diaries and pen drive to create an impression that the chief minister, some of his ministerial colleagues and senior officers were involved in the alleged scam. The whole exercise was meant to take false credit by some officers of ACB, who also wanted to satisfy their ego by settling scores with some officers”, Mr Tuteja said. “But, in the process, not only the image of state government was tarnished but also the PDS of the state, considered the best in the country, was given a bad name”, he lamented. He demanded a high-level probe to find out the motive behind the “move to tar the image” of the state government. Mr Tuteja also pleaded the chief minister to reconsider the decision to prosecute him in the case since no evidence has been found against him.