'I LOST OUT ON A PROMOTION'

WHAT WAS THE CASE

This man waited for 20 long years to wipe corruption taint off him. Suspended and later dismissed after he was accused of accepting a bribe of Rs 2,000, D K Mina lost the most productive years of his career knocking on doors of justice to guard his reputation. Yet, when the high court acquitted him recently after rejecting a lower court's order, the man did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Mina, a former class-1 officer with Registrar of Companies (RoC), said, "I have lived with the taint and humiliation for 20 years now. I kept telling them that I was innocent, but to no avail.Who will compensate for all that I have lost...reputation, career and money? Nobody wants to marry the daughter of a man accused of selling his soul. She is 28. What about her life?" Mina was the assistant registrar with RoC when, in 1995, he was accused of accepting a bribe of Rs 2,000. In 2002, court sentenced him to two years' imprisonment, following which he was dismissed from service. The ignominy forced the family to move to Mumbai where he began practising as a company secretary. Now, after the acquittal, Mina wrote to the Ministry of Commerce, under which the RoC falls, requesting them to take him back on job.Mina told Mirror, "I am 52 today. I was 32 when the case was filed. It robbed me of my chance of promotion as the joint registrar. Those who were my juniors are my seniors now. I could have been earning very well and leading a comfortable life had justice been delivered in a timely manner. At least now, if the MoC gives me back my job, I can work for eight more years." He says the post of joint registrar was vacant in 2006-07 and he was the only eligible candidate in his department for that post."Around then, I had even requested the court to expedite the proceedings, hoping things would work out for me. But it was not to be. When the RoC did not find a suitable candidate, they lowered the educational requirement and filled the post," he said. Mina joined service in 1988, at a young age of 25, after clearing the Indian Company Law Service exam conducted by the UPSC. "I was the youngest officer in my department then. I was just seven years into my service when a false case ruined my career. Today, I am 52 and a father of two. If I am taken back on my post, I will have not more than eight years to serve," he said.Had he not been a qualified CS, Mina says he would have struggled to look after his family. "I still cannot believe this happened to me. Anybody else in my place would have committed suicide," he said, adding, "I respect the judiciary. But there should be speedy delivery of justice else the innocent would suffer. Will money be enough compensation for all the years I have lost?" Mina's lawyer Chetan Pandya said, "We have communicated to the ministry to take him back on job as he was wrongly prosecuted. We have not only sought the job but even the arrears and the due promotion."On December 22, 1995, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a case against D K Mina, then Assistant Registrar of the RoC after Vaishali Patel, a clerk with a private company, accused him of seeking a bribe of Rs 2,000. He was suspended and transferred to Mumbai. On December 20, 2002, he was convicted by the Special CBI court and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. However, during the hearing of an appeal in the HC, the court found contradictions in Vaishali's testimony. At one point, she accepted that Mina had never asked for money during the raid, but later took a U-turn.It was found that Mina had not accepted the bribe she threw on his table. In fact the work for which she offered him bribe on December 22, 1995, had already been done by December 19. So, the court observed that there was no reason for the officer to demand bribe for the work he had already completed. The court also accepted lawyer Chetan Pandya's argument that CBI had filed a wrong case to trap him.