After a number of twists, final closure in City Centre case
CHANDIGARH: : The Ludhiana City Centre case, in which a Ludhiana court gave a clean chit to Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday, saw a number of twists and turns since the vigilance registered an FIR in 2007.
When the case came to light through media reports in 2006, the Akalis used it to level allegations of corruption in its campaign for 2007 assembly polls against the then Congress regime that Amarinder was leading.
With the Akalis emerging victorious and forming the government in 2007, the vigilance bureau, headed by ex-DGP Sumedh Singh Saini registered an FIR, filing the chargesheet against 36 accused in a Ludhiana court on December 12, 2007.
The then Ludhiana vigilance SSP Kanwarjit Singh Sandhu, who had filed the first probe report estimated that prima facie the wrongful loss to exchequer and the wrongful gain to M/S Today Homes, a private company, was between ₹1,500 crore and ₹3,000 crore. Later, the vigilance also claimed recovery of ₹40 lakh ‘bribe money’ from the then Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) executive officer, Dyal Chand Garg.
Vigilance also claimed to have recovered a pen drive from another accused, Chetan Gupta of Delhi.
It had claimed that the pen drive had details of the alleged ‘hawala’ transaction of at least ₹21 crore that Today Homes credited to the accounts of Amarinder
and his son, Raninder Singh.
VIGILANCE’S SURPRISING U-TURN
Just three days before 2017 Punjab polls results were to be announced on March 11, Gupta, of Today Homes, filed an application with the vigilance demanding ‘re-investigation’.
Vigilance sources said Gupta based his plea on an arbitration award of ₹1,050 crore that a Supreme Court appointed arbitrator and former chief justice of India, Justice RC Lahoti (retd), had awarded to Today Homes; justice Lahoti (retd) had found that there was no illegality in the award of the project to the company.
Ordering a re-probe, the vigilance filed a closure report within five months on August 19, 2017, giving a clean chit to all accused.
LIT had challenged the arbitration award, a decision on which is pending.
PLEAS CHALLENGING CLOSURE REPORT REJECTED
Four applications challenging the clean chit to the accused were filed. The movers of these pleas were former vigilance SSP Sandhu, ex-DGP Saini, Lok Insaaf Party MLA Simarjit Singh Bains and an architect SK Dey. The Ludhiana court rejected all such pleas. In his plea, Saini had even submitted that ‘false records’ were created and written in the cancellation report to shield offenders.
ED HAS NOT GOT COPY OF VIGILANCE FIR FOR 6 YRS
In 2013, the Jalandhar wing of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), also started investigation and filed an FIR under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on the basis of the vigilance FIR. The central agency has, however, not been given a copy of the vigilance FIR to date, even after it filed pleas in a Ludhiana court. One of its pleas, seeking a copy of the FIR, is still pending in the Punjab and Haryana high court, HT has learnt.
THE JALANDHAR WING OF THE ED ALSO STARTED PROBE AND FILED AN FIR UNDER THE PREVENTION OF MONEY LAUNDERING ACT IN 2013
ACQUITTAL RESULT OF BADAL-CAPT BONHOMIE: AAP
CHANDIGARH : Leader of Opposition in Punjab assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema, on Friday demanded that the Punjab government should file an appeal against the acquittal in HC. “The acquittal has proved that the vigilance and the advocate general are mere pawns in the hands of the ruling party. It also proves, once again, that how the Badal family and Captain were protecting each other in multi-crore scams; both are hand-in-glove with each other,” Cheema added.
WILL MOVE SC: BAINS
Lok Insaaf Party president and MLA Simarjeet Singh Bains said, “I will continue my fight and move the Supreme Court, so that the corrupt in the case can be brought to justice,” he said.