Raj police to probe role of Shekhawat in co-op case
THE PETITION WAS
FILED BY LADU SINGH AND GUMAN SINGH, RESIDENTS OF BARMER, WHO, ALONG WITH SOME 50,000 OTHER PEOPLE, INVESTED IN THE CO-OP SOCIETY SCHEME
nJAIPUR: A Jaipur court has ordered the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Rajasthan Police to probe the alleged role of Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, his wife, and three others, in the ~884 crore Sanjivani Credit Cooperative Society fraud case.
Additional district judge Pawan Kumar issued the order on July 21 -- it was made public on Thursday -- on a revision petition seeking, among other things, an investigation into the role of the Union Jal Shakti minister and his wife Naunad Kanwar in the fraud case registered by SOG in September 2019.
The petition was filed by Ladu Singh and Guman Singh, residents of Barmer, who, along with some 50,000 other people, invested in the scheme that offered interest between 10% and 12%. Ladu Singh claimed to invest ~54 lakh and and Guman Singh ~14 lakh with Sanjivani Cooperative Society.
They alleged that they got no return for their investments, and the money trail led to companies linked with Shekhawat and his wife. The head of Sanjivani Cooperative Society,
Vikram Singh, was arrested last September and is in jail since then on charges of cheating, forgery and fraud.
Shekhawat’s office said the Union minister will study the order before commenting on it. “We will read the order before putting out our reaction,” said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Rajendra Rathore, who is the deputy leader of Opposition in the state assembly.
Shekhawat has been in the news in recent days after the Congress alleged his voice can be heard in audio tapes of purported conversations detailing a plot to topple the Ashok Gehlot government. Shekhawat has denied the charge and said he is ready for a probe. He was also named by chief minister Gehlot in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about an alleged attempt by the BJP to bring down the Rajasthan government.
The SOG earlier this week issued a notice to Shekhawat to record his statement in connection with the taped conversations. Shekhawat had denied any role in state’s political crisis, and said that none of the voices in the tapes are his.
The counsel for the complainants, Ajay Kumar Jain, said a magistrate’s court in Jaipur rejected the petition on July 13. But the additional district judge Kumar accepted a revision petition, filed on June 20.
“I direct the investigative agency to conduct a probe into the complaint,” Kumar said in his order dated July 21.
The cooperative society, which began operations in 2008 from Barmer, had allegedly cheated 50,000 investors of ~884 crore, the SOG said in a charge sheet filed in a Jaipur court on December 13, 2019.
“The SOG found that documents between the year 2008 and 2015 were destroyed by the office-bearers of the society. Till June 30 this year (2019), 214,472 investors had invested Rs 883.38 crore but none of them were paid maturity dues,” the charge sheet added.