CBI books 4 scientists for abusing office

CHENNAI: The CBI on Friday registered a case against two former directors of a research department of the Central Government, a scientist and a professor working in a university in the United States for allegedly abusing their official positions and causing losses running up to several crores of rupees to the exchequer. The scientists in India were attached to an electronics design centre (EDC), the first-of-its-kind establishment, being set up here in Perungudi.CBI officials said they had registered a case against S Karunakaran and KR Kini — both ex-directors of Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER), K Sridhar, Scientist ‘F’ and Project Director of EDC, and Chennai-based Dr Madhavan Swaminathan, the then Deputy Director, Packaging Research Centre (PRC), Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.The trio in connivance with each other and the Deputy Director of PRC, allegedly abused their official positions since 2005 and allegedly caused loss to the state exchequer during the establishment and construction of the EDC. They had allegedly gone on foreign trips for training and had not contributed anything towards the establishment, officials said.The EDC was under SAMEER, a Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India undertaking. Officials said that the accused got the approval from the Centre to tie up with PRC, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, US, as the same facility was not available in India. A total of `23 crore was approved for EDC project - `8 crore by SAMEER, located in Taramani, and the rest availed of as grants-in-aid from the Department of Information Technology. The duration of the project was 36 months from July 2006 and was expected to be completed by August 2009. But till date, only the building exists, no other work in EDC has taken place, officials said.“The objective of EDC is to conduct researches and design technology for miniaturisation of complicated circuits. This is the first of its kind in the country,” explained a CBI official.Further, on behalf of EDC, 13 scientists of SAMEER had made foreign trips at a cost of `38,36,709 and the CBI seized incriminating documents during a raid in EDC last week.  “The building does not have either a CMDA approval or power connection. Just for the sake of showing it in the audit, they had generators and spent `40,000 on diesel to run them. The staff were working for SAMEER and not for EDC. Accused in Akash Missile Project CaseCBI officials recalled that Karunakaran and Kini were earlier arrested in March for alleged irregularities in the supply of modems for the country’s Akash Missile Project. It was while investigating this case that officials discovered the irregularities in EDC.