Maliwal moves ACB against Sheila, Barkha, Kiran Walia

DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal on Friday accused former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and former DCW chiefs Barkha Singh Shukla and Kiran Walia of indulging in massive corruption and asked the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) to arrest and jail them.

In a six-page complaint filed with the ACB, Maliwal said she had uncovered "gross financial irregularities and high misappropriation of government funds" by Barkha Singh and Walia, prima facie under the directions of Dikshit from 2007 to 2015.

Dikshit was the Chief Minister of Delhi from 1998 to 2013.

Maliwal, who herself is facing an ACB probe over alleged irregularities in recruitment to the Delhi Commission for Women, said a 128-page document detailing all the wrongdoing by the three had been submitted to the ACB.

"They have misused the funds of the Commission and spent crores of rupees just to benefit a few companies," Maliwal said in a statement.

"The most pathetic thing they did is that they misused the name of Nirbhaya," she said, referring to the young woman whose rape and murder in the capital in December 2012 triggered nationwide protests.

"On her death, they spent over Rs 50 lakh benefiting certain companies," Maliwal said.

"Dikshit used to write to the Commission and used to say 'Please give particular fund to a particular company' and without following any procedure the money was transferred to these particular companies," she said.

"They even gave paid advertisement to magazines which nobody knows about (for) self glorification," she added.

Maliwal, who became the DCW chief after the Aam Aadmi Party took power in Delhi in 2015, said the DCW had investigated all these with a sense of responsibility.

"We have gone through all the files and we did this once this entire ACB issue (against her) started.

"We were absolutely shocked to find the kind of corruption and meanness these people could have displayed in the name of women.

"We (have) submitted a proper and detailed complaint with proof to the ACB," she said, urging the ACB to register an FIR against the three women politicians "and arrest them and put them in jail".

Maliwal said the FIR slapped against her was "absolutely baseless".

"They have no proof, no criminal charges that are made out. Here we are giving 128 pages of evidence."

Asked if she was acting out of vendetta, Maliwal said when she took charge of DCW, she did not go through any files.

"I thought let me start afresh... But when they complained against me, in order to understand the procedure that was to be followed, we started looking through the files.

"I was shocked to see that this is the kind of corruption they could do in a very, very small organisation which hardly has any budget. I wonder what they must be doing for the entire Delhi government."

After the ACB acted against Maliwal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said he too had been named in the FIR and vowed to expose the actions of the central government aimed at crippling his government.

--IANS

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