Preet Mandir records being moved without court order

October 2, 2012 / indianexpress.com

The managing trustee of adoption home Preet Mandir on Monday got shifted some of the records of the adoption home from Pune Camp unit to Kalyaninagar unit without permission from the Bombay High Court or the Women and Child Development Commissioner. The adoption agency has been restricted to move the documents which are the evidence in the case of illegal adoption being probed by the CBI.

When contacted, trustee D P Bhatia agreed that they were moving some records to Kalyaninagar facility. “If we move the court for permission, it will take a long time since the CBI case is on. I have a feeling that my request will not even be entertained by the court. Meanwhile, we are facing inconvenience every day as half of the staff is in Kalyaninagar and the rest in Camp. We cannot keep sending someone to Camp asking for the records whenever we need them for reference,” he said.

“The Bombay High Court has directed Preet Mandir not to shift documents as they are an evidence in the illegal adoption case registered by the CBI. However, the managing trustee sent us a tempo on Monday afternoon and directed to move the records to Kalyaninagar office,” said one of the staff members of Preet Mandir.

According to the chargesheet filed by the CBI in March 2011, Joginder Singh Bhasin, the then managing trustee of Preet Mandir, his wife Mahinder and son Gurpreet allegedly misappropriated funds for their personal use from 2002 to 2007 for travel and stay in five-star hotels. The accused have been charged under various Sections of the IPC, including 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 467 and 468 (forgery), 363 (kidnapping), 383 (extortion), 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 405 (criminal breach of trust), 471 (falsification of account) along with Section 132(2) read with Section 13(1) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

Last week draft charges were filed against Bhasin, Mahinder, Gurpreet, Vasudev Gangadhar Darshane, superintendent of Navrange Balak Ashram, Pandharpur, Chandrashekhar Admane, social worker at Preet Mandir and J K Mittal, former chairman of the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), New Delhi.