Court frames charges against former IAS officer Mandeep Singh, 2 others
MOHALI: A local court on Friday framed charges against former Punjab transport secretary Mandeep Singh and two others in a corruption and forgery case.
The development comes days after the Punjab and Haryana high court dismissed Mandeep’s plea seeking reinvestigation into the case on the recommendation of the Mehtab Singh Gill Commission, which was set up to look into cases filed by the previous government out of alleged political vendetta.
Charges were framed in the court of additional sessions judge Sanjay Agnihotri against 1991-batch retired IAS officer of Punjab cadre and his alleged accomplices — Panchkula-based Avtar Singh, who is a stakeholder with him in a hotel in Zirakpur, and Makhan Singh of Chamkaur Sahib who allegedly helped him make fake documents for sale/purchase of property to turn black money into white.
The Mehtab Singh Gill Commission had recommended reinvestigation in the case. However, the high court had dismissed Mandeep’s plea recently, observing that the panel had “exceeded it limits while passing an impugned order of 2017, which does not deserve to be accepted at any cost by the state government...”
The vigilance bureau had filed the chargesheet against Mandeep and the two others in March 2017. Additional district attorney HS Rakkar said the case was registered against them on August 28, 2015. The case was registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) and Sections 420 (fraud), 467 (forgery of a valuable security or will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. The court has framed charges under all these sections, barring 420 of the IPC.
A vigilance inquiry had found out that Mandeep Singh had allegedly spent and invested ₹ 9.55 crore from April 1, 1998, to March 31, 2014.
During this period, his income from known sources was only Rs 4.13 crore. The probe also revealed that Mandeep owns three residential properties, one each in Sectors 3, 8 and 33 in Chandigarh; a house in Shimla, and three showrooms in Chandigarh— two of them in Sector 22 and one in Sector 10. He also has 113-acre land in Chamkaur Sahib and holds about 80% share in a hotel in Zirakpur.