Patna, July 24: Patna High Court today upheld a special vigilance court’s order to confiscate the disproportionate assets, valued at well over Rs 1 crore, of former director-general of police (DGP) Narayan Mishra.

The bench of Justice Mandhata Singh passed the direction on an appeal by Mishra challenging the vigilance court order directing the authorities concerned to confiscate the assets amassed beyond his known sources of income.

A special vigilance court had, on February 1 this year, directed the Patna district magistrate to initiate the process of confiscation of disproportionate assets of the former DGP and five members of his family, who have been charged with accumulating unaccounted assets.

The high court single bench had stayed the special vigilance court’s order on March 15.

Justice Singh today dismissed Mishra’s plea after hearing his arguments and that of the vigilance department. The bench, however, reduced the valuation of Mishra’s disproportionate assets by Rs 5.34 lakh, pegging the former DGP’s disproportionate assets at Rs 1.34 crore against Rs 1.4 crore fixed by the vigilance court.

Appearing for the vigilance department, senior advocate Ramakant Sharma submitted that Mishra’s assets — houses and plots of land in Patna and elsewhere, cash and shares — were disproportionate as they were not earned from his known sources of income.

Mishra, while defending his case along with counsel Vindhya Keshari, contended that the vigilance department had wrongly calculated the value of his assets. The property and assets have been earned and acquired through gifts and ancestral property, he said.

During investigation, vigilance officers stumbled on documents related to Mishra and his family’s four-storied building at Ved Nagar, Rukunpura, a flat at Rukunpura (Pawan Villa), a plot of land measuring 1,352sqft at Rukunpura, two plots of land each of 5,440sqft at Nepali Nagar (Digha), Patna, and two plots of 21.5 decimals at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. The special vigilance unit also found that Mishra had invested large sums in the share market.

The vigilance bureau registered a disproportionate assets case against Mishra in July 2007. The bureau had charged Mishra and his family with amassing assets to the tune of Rs 1.4 crore beyond their known sources of income between 1984 and 2007. Mishra, a 1969 batch IPS officer, was the state police chief under the RJD regime (2004-05).

The vigilance court had directed the Patna district administration to complete the process of confiscation of the disproportionate assets of Mishra, his wife Kanchan Mishra, two sons Satyabrat Mishra and Subrat Mishra and two daughters-in-law Pooja Mishra and Rita Mishra.

Mishra, said to be a native of Odisha, is the sixth serving public servant against whom the process of confiscation of disproportionate assets was initiated under the Bihar Special Courts Act, 2009.

He would be the third official of the state government whose disproportionate assets would be confiscated under the act. Earlier, the assets of Shiv Shanker Varma (suspended IAS officer) and Girish Kumar, an assistant in the Patna district collectorate, were attached after the high court dismissed their pleas.