Jammu Anti-Corruption court rejects pre-arrest bail plea of Principal GMC in DOB forgery case

jj correspondent

Jammu, July 10: The Special Judge Anti-corruption Jammu Tahir Khurshid Raina on Monday rejected the pre-arrest bail application of Dr Shashi Sudhan Sharma, Principal, Government Medical College Jammu in case of forging her date of birth.
Special Judge Anti-corruption Jammu Tahir Khurshid Raina after hearing Senior Advocate Pranav Kohli for the applicant whereas APP Irshad Ahmed for the Crime Branch, observed that the order granting or refusing bail must reflect a fine balance between the two conflicting interests i.e, sanctity of individual liberty and the demand of effective, perfect and fair investigation by the police.
“When seen in context of facts, as put in the preceding paras, I don’t find any justification left to this court to sustain the plea of pre-arrest bail to be granted to the accused. Consequently, the interim bail, granted vide order dated 06-07-2023 is not being extended further,” the court observed.
The gravamen of the case is based on date of birth controversy of the applicant, who is presently holding the coveted position of Principal Medical College, Jammu.
The allegations as inferred from the report and the CD file is that her date of birth as recorded in the matriculation diploma issued by the J&K Board of School Education, Jammu, (for short JKBOSE) is 08-04-1965.
However, it is alleged that as per the said date of birth, she was ineligible to appear in the MBBS entrance examination in the year 1981, as she had not then attained the eligible age of 17 years as on Dec. 31, 1981.
It further transpires that she got her date of birth corrected from JK BOSE in the year 1981, whereby she got her new date of birth certificate, carrying date of birth as 08-04-1964.
Based on this corrected date of birth certificate, she became eligible to appear in the MBBS entrance examination and she did appear and qualified the same and got selected for the course.
The controversy, relating to date of birth of the applicant, came to fore in the year 2021, when Crime Branch, Jammu, received a complaint from a person, namely, Manu Gupta of Channi Himmat, Jammu. UNI