Book scam: Post-suicide, Congress demands CBI probe

The Congress on Thursday demanded a CBI inquiry into the book scam and also into the episode of the suicide committed by senior education officer Vinod Kumar, who was indicted in the AN Jindal Commission report that had exonerated education minster Sikandar Singh Maluka.

The Congress on Thursday demanded a CBI inquiry into the book scam and also into the episode of the suicide committed by senior education officer Vinod Kumar, who was indicted in the AN Jindal Commission report that had exonerated education minster Sikandar Singh Maluka.

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“The Congress rejects and trashes the Justice Jindal report, as chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had manipulated Justice Jindal for clean chit to his blue eyed minister Sikandar Singh and making three officers the scapegoats,” Punjab Congress spokesman Sukhpal Khaira said in a statement here.

“The core questions that remain unanswered even today are, that how could Justice Jindal give a clean chit to a corrupt education minister under whose orders the three-member purchase committee was appointed?

Could the officers have indulged in fraud, if the purchase committee had not been set up? Why was a cement pipe making factory close to Mr. Maluka, selected to supply books to the department? Although, the commission has given its report to the government in December 2013, why is Badal sitting over it?” Khaira asked.

Vinod’s indictment by the Jindal commission, he said, had led the officer into depression that resulted in his suicide.

Badal had earlier straight away denied the demand of the Congress for a CBI inquiry into the scam when it was unearthed last year, he pointed out.