E-Paper
Chandigarh: Three parking employees arrested for extortion at Sector-26 grain market
High court had directed Chandigarh Police to lodge criminal cases against the parking contractor if the illegal practice of charging fee at the market’s entry points continues
Acting on the directions of the Punjab and Haryana high court, the Chandigarh Police have arrested a parking manager and his two staffers for charging entry fees at the Sector 26 grain market.
On March 16, the high court bench of justice Rajbir Sehrawat had directed the Chandigarh Police to register criminal case against the market’s parking contractor if his staff is found charging parking fee at the entry gates of the market.
The order was passed on a plea by one Amit Kumar Bansal and three others, who in February had approached the court alleging that the parking contractor had been assigned only some particular slots for the operation and management of paid parking. But he had been levying parking fee even at the market’s entry points, irrespective of where the vehicles were headed. Neither any tender was floated nor was any entry fee ever imposed by the authority concerned, the petitioners had argued.
Following the court order, police found the contractor’s staff illegally levying fee at the entry points of the market, and arrested parking manager Mandeep and his workers, Zahid Sikander and Amir, all residents of Bapu Dham Colony in Sector 26.
They were booked under Sections 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code at the Sector 26 police station.
Also named in the FIR are the parking contractor, Mohammad Idrish Khan of New Indira Colony, Sector 13, Manimajra, and officers of the market committee, who are in charge of the operations and management of the parking contract.
Officials privy to the matter said they were investigating the case and more arrests were likely to be made soon.
Amit Kumar Bansal, a businessman, who is among the petitioners who had approached the high court, said, “It’s not just traders and customers who visit the market. Around 30 families are also living in the shop-cum-flats here and have to pay the parking fee just to bring their vehicles to their residence. Whenever the contractor was approached about this, he dismissed us rudely and even threatened to beat us up. We wrote to the authorities concerned several times, but our pleas were ignored, forcing us to approach the high court as a last resort.”
