Court denies bail to graft accused PF officer

Vadodara: Graft accused enforcement director of provident fund Paru Tiwari was denied bail by a sessions court here on Saturday.
Tiwari, who was arrested on December 17 after she turned herself in, had sought regular bail from the court here pleading innocence in the case and that there is change in circumstances in the case.

She had informed the court that she has been wrongly booked in the case as she had neither demanded nor accepted the bribe from the complainant and it was the middleman Hasmukh Trivedi who had demanded the bribe and projected himself as Tiwari’s applicant.

However, the additional public prosecutor K P Chauhan opposed her bail by referring to the transcript of the conversation between Tiwari and Trivedi in which she had confirmed she is aware that Trivedi has received the payment of money from the complainant and she also asks Trivedi another transaction.

The court of principal district and sessions judge J C Doshi denied bail to Tiwari by upholding arguments made by Chauhan and after going through the transcripts of conversations between the complainant and Tiwari and between Trivedi and Tiwari.

The court observed that since Tiwari has confirmed the receipt of payment, her prima facie involvement in visible.

Tiwari was earlier denied anticipatory bail by the same court and the Gujarat high court. Later she had even moved Supreme Court, but her plea was not admitted and she was directed to present herself before the investigating officer.

Tiwari was booked for demanding a bribe of Rs1.2 lakh from an IT company owner. She had asked Trivedi to collect the bribe and was nabbed red-handed on October 15 by ACB sleuths. Tiwari had been absconding since then.