Illegal sand mining: Channi’s nephew, aide file bail plea
JALANDHAR: Former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew Bhupinder Singh, alias Honey, and his aide Kudratdeep Singh on Wednesday filed a bail plea in the special PMLA court in Jalandhar in the illegal sand mining case.
Honey was arrested on February 3 this year and is in judicial custody. The enforcement directorate had filed chargesheet against Honey and Kudrat on March 31 in the illegal sand mining case under the money laundering charges in the Jalandhar court. Special PMLA judge Rupinderjit Chahal has fixed the next hearing on April 16.
In his bail plea, Honey alleged that the ED built up the case. He and Kudratdeep launched a company “Providers Overseas Consultants Private Limited”
and both were the shareholders whereas Honey has no link or nexus with the FIR registered against Kudrat in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar district in 2018 in illegal sand mining.
“The alleged recovery of Rs 9.97 crore is made from the three premises of January 18 and 19 and the offence alleged was committed in 2017 and there is huge time lapse in the offence and recovery of money. The money has no concern with the mining business of Kudratdeep and whereas Malikpur mining site was only functional for the period from October 2017 to February 2018 and the same was suspended due to non-payment of government dues and thereafter it never got functional. The allegation that recovered money is the proceeds of crime is fallacious,” the application read.
The plea further said that Honey was neither accused in the SBS Nagar FIR nor chargesheeted by the police, which was conveniently ignored by the ED, under which procedure ECIR is tenable against the petitioner.
“In the present case, it is unclear what principles would govern the registration of an ECIR against Bhupinder. There is no legal criteria which mandates when the ED ought to investigate an offence, even no offence is registered against the petitioner,” the plea stated.