HEAR ME OUT BEFORE CLEAN CHIT TO CAPT: SAINI TO COURT
LUDHIANA CITY CENTRE Saini says accused in case ‘big guns, all moneyed and influential’, wants to submit ‘sensitive material’ in sealed envelope; the next date of hearing is December 7
In a new twist in the Ludhiana City Centre case, former Punjab director general of police (DGP) Sumedh Singh Saini on Wednesday urged the district and sessions judge, Gurbir Singh, that he be heard before the order on the cancellation report. Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and his son Raninder are among those booked for causing monetary loss to the state by awarding the contract for the Ludhiana City Centre to a Delhi-based construction firm.
In a new twist in the Ludhiana City Centre case, former Punjab director general of police (DGP) Sumedh Singh Saini on Wednesday urged the district and sessions judge, Gurbir Singh, that he be heard before the order on the cancellation report. Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and his son Raninder are among those booked for causing monetary loss to the state by awarding the contract for the Ludhiana City Centre to a Delhi-based construction firm.
Saini, who was the Vigilance Bureau director when the case was registered in March 2007, said in his plea that a contradictory view was taken by the VB only last year when it submitted the cancellation report, a decade after the registration of the case.
“The applicant was serving as head of the department in Vigilance Bureau when the FIR was registered and when the chargesheet, under Section 173 (2) of the CrPC, was submitted before the trial court. In this case, a contradictory view has been taken after an inexplicable delay of 10 years in the form of a cancellation report,” the plea read.
Saini, who moved the application through advocate Ramanpreet Sandhu, sought that he may be permitted to submit “sensitive material” in a sealed cover for the court’s perusal. “After 10 years of filing the chargesheet, circumstances changed. We should be given a chance to submit material in a sealed envelope to you. For five years after the FIR (first information report) in the City Centre case, the investigation was fair till the time I held the post of vigilance director. The accused in the case are big guns, all moneyed and influential. I wish to submit material in a sealed envelope,” it said.
“An opportunity may be given to place on record relevant facts necessary for fair and just adjudication of the case in the interest of justice and in public interest,” the plea said.
After hearing arguments, the court sent a notice to the Punjab government and all accused to file their replies by December 7, the next date of hearing.
Earlier, the court had dismissed a similar application by former vigilance senior superintendent of police Kanwarjit Singh Sandhu on the grounds that he had no locus standi to move the plea.
OUT OF FAVOUR
Before Captain Amarinder Singh was sworn in as chief minister in his previous term in 2002, Saini was considered a close aide. After the ambit of the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) scam probe widened, Saini was shifted out of the intelligence wing.
His equation with Amarinder went from bad to worse so much so that when Capt faced graft charges in the Ludhiana City Centre and Amritsar Improvement Trust cases, Saini was the vigilance head under the SADBJP government (2007-12).
The souring equation between the two pushed Saini into the close circle of the Akali leadership, particularly party president Sukhbir Singh Badal. When the Akalis won a second consecutive term in 2012, Saini was made the state police chief, superseding four officers.
The Justice Ranjit Singh commission recently held Saini among those responsible for police firing on Sikhs protesting against the sacrilege of the holy book in Kotkapura on October 15, 2015.
Last month, the Punjab and Haryana high court granted interim relief to Saini, directing the Punjab government to give a week’s notice to him if the police plan to arrest him once a case is made out.