City Centre scam: Hearing on ex-vigilance SSP’S plea adjourned to Aug 16

LUDHIANA : The district and sessions court, on Wednesday, adjourned the hearing of an application that former vigilance SSP, Kanwarjit Singh Sandhu, has filed in the ₹1,144-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam to August 16. In the application, Sandhu has alleged that chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and former CM Parkash Singh Badal had joined hands to settle corruption cases filed against each other.

Sandhu’s counsel, advocate Vijay Mahendru, sought adjournment on the grounds that they had to inspect the case files. He also pleaded that they wanted to go through the order in which a similar application filed by Lok Insaaf Party MLA Satinder Singh Bains was dismissed in March this year.

In the previous hearing, heated arguments were witnessed in court with the prosecution stating that Sandhu’s application was liable to be dismissed as it was politically motivated.

On the other hand, Mahendru had stated that the former SSP was being pressured to support the cancellation report in the scam when the court will summon him for recording his statement as he was the investigating officer in the case.

On July 18, the complainant in the scam had said that he was being pressured to depose in court in the favour of the accused. The vigilance which registered the case in 2007, filed the closure report in a Ludhiana court last year.

The Punjab vigilance bureau (VB) had registered the case in March 2007, wherein Capt Amarinder Singh, his son Raninder Singh, and former local bodies minister Jagjit Singh, now deceased, were named, along with others, for allegedly causing monetary loss to the state by awarding the contract for a multi-million mega project for the City Centre in Ludhiana to a New Delhi-based construction company.