E-Paper
Ex-Punjab DGP Saini to pay ₹2.5 lakh as monthly rent for attached house in Chandigarh
District collector to deposit the monthly rent for the two-kanal house in Chandigarh’s Sector 20 in the district treasury office till further court orders
A day after a local court ordered provisional attachment of House Number 3048, Sector 20-D, Chandigarh, where former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini lives, the court has directed the district collector to levy a monthly rent of ₹2.5 lakh till further court orders.
The Punjab Vigilance Bureau had sought the property’s attachment, claiming it was purchased by Saini using “tainted and black money”, without any sales deed, resulting in losses to the government exchequer.
In the detailed orders, the court of additional district and session judge PS Grewal directed the district collector to carry out attachment of the two-kanal house by affixing a notice there and to receive a monthly rent of ₹2.5 lakh from Saini till further court orders.
The court also directed the district treasury officer not to release the rent deposited.
Also, notices have been issued to Surinderjit Singh Jaspal, the registered owner of the house, and his son Nimratdeep Singh, a serving executive engineer in Punjab, as to why this provisional attachment not be made absolute.
According to the bureau’s probe, Jaspal bought the property, but it was actually purchased by Saini, who was retired and was shown to have taken the house on rent after renovations in October 2018.
However, no money in the shape of rent has ever been received.
Instead, ₹6.4 crore were paid by Saini to Jaspal without any sale agreement. Later, a fabricated agreement was placed on record, which was neither on stamp paper nor attested by any witness, and is signed only by Saini and Jaspal.
The house in question is among 39 properties, worth at least ₹80 crore, that the bureau claims were amassed by Nimratdeep through corruption. He was previously also booked by the bureau on corruption charges in September 2020.
