Dehradun: The authorities here have pulled down portions of the house of the journalist who had conducted a sting on Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s former personal secretary that purportedly showed him negotiating a bribery deal for liquor licences.
Mussoorie-Dehradun Development Authority (MMDA) which carried out the demolition said portions of the building were razed to the ground as they did not conform to the map approved by it. A notice had been issued to the owner before the demolition exercise was carried out, MDDA secretary P C Dumka said. Ashok Pandey, the owner of the house who had done the sting, however, said he was being targeted as he had “caught an IAS officer said to be close to the chief minister on camera while indulging in corruption”.
“I am being victimised as I exposed corruption in high offices,” said Pandey. Claiming threat to his life, he said he has approached the Uttarakhand High Court seeking protection. Opposition BJP was quick in throwing its weight behind Pandey saying that instead of taking acting against the accused official, the state government was targeting the man who blew the lid off a bribery deal.
“Instead of acting against the corrupt official, the Chief Minister is running after the man who exposed corruption,” Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Ajay Bhatt said. He also demanded a CBI probe into the CD episode. The sting CD, where Rawat’s former personal secretary Mohammad Shahid was purportedly shown negotiating a bribery deal for liquor licences, had led to a series of altercations between the state government and the opposition.
BJP has been demanding Rawat’s resignation saying that from the video tape of the sting operation, “it is clear that corruption is prevailing under chief minister’s nose and he is sheltering the corrupt people”. The accused official Mohammad Shahid, a Gujarat cadre IAS officer of 1998 batch, since then has been recalled to the Centre and his tenure curtailed, days after his name cropped up in connection with the sting CD episode.
Shahid had come on deputation to Uttarakhand, couple of months after Harish Rawat took over as the Chief Minister in February last year.
