E-Paper
Ludhiana: Will investigate 296 ‘undervalued’ land registrations: Police to HC
District revenue officer (DRO) Girjinder Singh, who was also present in the court, said he would personally examine the matter
A complaint regarding 11 land deals, alleged to be undervalued, has snowballed into a major land scam involving 296 undervalued land deals in Ludhiana East sub-division from 2016 to 2019. During a hearing of the case by the Punjab and Haryana high court (HC), an additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP), representing the district police, submitted that FIRs would be registered in all 296 cases and a thorough investigation would be carried out.
District revenue officer (DRO) Girjinder Singh, who was also present in the court, said he would personally examine the matter and apprise the court at the next hearing. He will also examine why the deficient stamp duties have not been made good in the 296 cases. The next hearing is on February 13.
The HC order has also mentioned two FIRs in similar cases lodged at the division number 5 police station on July 2, 2016 (FIR number 113) and November 17, 2022 (FIR number 301). Out of these, the police had filed a cancellation report in connection with the FIR lodged in 2016.
According to the court orders with respect to the FIR number 301, the report under Section 173 (2) of the CrPC already stands submitted. Therefore, the question of submitting a cancellation report in FIR number 113 where the allegations are absolutely identical to those levelled in FIR number 301, does not arise.
The court ordered the state counsel to apprise it that the report under Section 173 (2) of the CrPC shall be presented in FIR number 113 within a period of two weeks.
The orders came during the hearing of a writ petition filed by a whistleblower, Subhash Kundra, alias Katty, a resident of Sector 32-A, Chandigarh Road, Ludhiana, who has been pursuing the matter since 2016. Earlier, he had sent multiple representations to the police, Vigilance Bureau and the district administration for action, citing the accused were causing losses to the state exchequer.
According to Katty, he received threats and was even assaulted for pursuing the matter. After the matter was highlighted, the division number 5 police had on July 2, 2016 registered an FIR against Daresi Ram Leela Committee office-bearer Kamal Kumar Bassi, his wife Raj Rani Bassi and daughter Deepika Chopra besides three others for forgery, causing losses worth lakhs of rupees to the state government with the help of revenue officials.
During the hearing by the court over the years, the district administration looked into the land registrations to find out that there were 296 such cases wherein the plots were allegedly shown undervalued.
Explaining the modus operandi, the complainant alleged that while getting the land registered, the accused showed a different area in the documents instead of the actual one to evade paying the full stamp duty to the government.
The others booked are Mohinder Kaur of Madhopuri, Urmila Rani and Pallavi Arora of Circular road. The police slammed Sections 177 (furnishing false information), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (now replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) against the accused following the complaint of Sonika Krantiveer, who was the head of an organisation — Bhrashtachar Virodh Jagrati Abhiyan. Katty alleged that the police had filed a cancellation report in the matter multiple times which was subsequently rejected by the court.
A similar FIR was again registered against the accused on November 11, 2022.
