Date:30/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/30/stories/2008083054120300.htm

New Delhi

CBI gives adverse report on MP

J. Venkatesan

“Investigation reveals prima facie commission of cognisable offences”

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has informed the Supreme Court that the Congress Member of Parliament from Tezpur constituency in Assam had committed a citizenship fraud by producing a birth certificate obtained by misrepresentation of facts and in a fraudulent manner.

Its report to the court was in response to a petition filed by B.N. Singh alleging that Moni Kumar Subba, the MP, described as a lottery king was a convicted Nepal national and that he crossed over to India after his conviction.

The petitioner alleged that Mr. Subba was a citizen of Nepal, born in Teplejum district and his original name was Maniraj Limbo. He was awarded life imprisonment by a Nepal court in a murder case in 1971.

Thereafter he escaped from the medical ward of the jail in May 1973 and crossed over to India and changed his name to Moni Kumar Subba. He first got elected to the Lok Sabha in 1998 and won a second term also.

The petitioner sought a direction to the government and the CBI to probe the antecedents of Mr. Subba and submit a report to the court and to unseat him from the post of MP.

The CBI said the birth certificate produced by Mr. Subba that he was born on March 16, 1958 at Dabgram in Siliguri was false.

It pointed that during the birth of his daughter in a nursing home in 1992, “the nationality of mother and father of Ms. Roshni which was originally shown as Nepali has been corrected as Indian by the orders of the Municipal Health Officer.”

The report further said that during the 1991 Assembly polls in Assam, Mr. Subba in his nomination papers had given his postal address as Harmoti, Lakhimpur district and his age as 40. It showed that Mr. Subba must have been born in 1951 and not in 1958 as claimed by him in his birth certificate.

The investigation revealed a prima facie commission of cognisable offences punishable under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery), 471 (using forged documents as genuine) and 193 (giving false evidence) and Section 12 of the Passports Act on the part of Mr. Subba, the report said. The case comes up for hearing on September 11.