Court orders probe against minister in credit society scam
jaipur — Four days after the Special Operation Group (SOG) sent a notice to Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in connection with the purported audio clips indicating his alleged involvement in horse trading of MLAs in Rajasthan, a city court has directed the Rajasthan police to probe a complaint alleging Shekhawat’s role in a credit society scam worth Rs8.4 billion.
The additional district judge on Tuesday, directed the additional chief judicial magistrate’s court to send the complaint against Shekhawat to the SOG. Shekhawat, his wife and other partners have been named in the complaint in the Sanjivani Credit Cooperative Society scam in which around 50,000 investors allegedly lost about Rs8.4 billion.
The Jaipur unit of the SOG has been probing the scam since last year after an FIR was registered on August 23, 2019.
Now, Jaipur ADJ Court-8 ordered a fresh inquiry in the case against Gajendra Singh accepting the revised application filed by Lagu Singh and Guman Singh and said that “this is a serious matter and hence SOG should investigate this”.
Both the applicants had invested a huge amount in Sanjivani credit cooperative society.
It is alleged in the complaint that a multistorey building has been built with the money instead of a theatre which was proposed earlier and many properties were also bought in Ethiopia with the money. An SOG investigation also reveals that a large amount of money has been deposited into accounts of Shekhawat and his wife at different time spans, said sources.
Earlier, Shekhawat was not mentioned in the chargesheet filed by the SOG in connection with the case. Later, a magistrate’s court also rejected the application to include him in the chargesheet. The applicants then approached the additional district judge’s court with a revised application. —