New Delhi: Vital records of a charitable trust, which along with one of its trustees Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi and some others is embroiled in a suit relating to alleged misappropriation of funds, have gone missing, a Delhi court has been informed.
The civil suit was filed in 1997 in which Satyarthi along with his wife Sumedha were named as defendants. The court was apprised about the missing records by the receiver who was appointed to look into various key aspects of the dispute and file a report on it.
Receiver Rana Parveen Siddiqui told the court that some important records of Mukti Pratisthan Trust were missing, due to which she was facing difficulty in preparing her report.
Siddiqui told Additional District Judge Kamini Lau that the records in her possession were till 1987 while those after that year, could not be found at the earlier office of the trust in Delhi.
When the court was informed about it, the judge said it would not be possible for the receiver to complete the entire report. She asked the plaintiffs, including another trustee Sheo Taj Singh, and defendants Satyarthi and Sumedha to inform the court about the place where the post-1987 records had been kept.
The court passed the direction while hearing the civil suit which alleged that the plaintiffs had come to know about embezzlement of huge sums of money belonging to the trust and expropriation of huge amounts by maintaining false accounts.
The plaint alleged that when Singh conducted an inquiry into the affairs and accounts of the trust, he came to know that "major part of the trust funds, running into huge sums of money has been spent by the defendant trustees (Satyarthi and his wife) either on foreign trips and other luxuries or have been embezzled by way of falsification of accounts".
Satyarthi and his wife had earlier filed a statement challenging the maintainability of the suit and had also denied the allegations made in it.
They had alleged that the plaint filed against them was a proxy litigation which the plaintiffs have filed in "collusion with their mentor Swami Agnivesh a political figure and Arya Samaj leader who was putting pressure to grab the movable and immovable properties of the trust".
During the hearing, the receiver told the court that she had taken in her possession all documents relating to the accounts in which there were handwritten entries. There were several forms having thumb impressions without any details of the persons, she said.
Siddiqui said the missing records were earlier available in the Jantar Mantar office of the trust but when she again went there, the documents could not be found.
She said she has been unable to finalise the final report not only due to the missing records but also as she was not from commerce background to examine the trust's accounts.
At this juncture, the counsel appearing for plaintiffs and defendants submitted they have no objection in appointment of a professional Chartered Accountant for purposes of assisting the receiver in analysing the records.
The plaint said the trust had been receiving grants and financial aids from various sources, including foreign agencies, and in previous years it had received millions of rupees as aids and donations from these sources.
It alleged that nothing has been spent in accordance with the motives of the trust and this "false and fraudulent practice was intended to cheat other trustees, public and the state which was detected during the inquiry."
It was also found that in order to cover up the diversion of trust money for vested interests, false and forged accounts have been prepared, the plaint claimed.
