E-Paper
Food grains transportation tenders scam: Court dismisses Ashu’s bail plea
The court of additional session judge Dr Ajit Atri dismissed the bail plea of former congress cabinet minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu in food grains transportation tenders scam on Friday
The court of additional session judge Dr Ajit Atri dismissed the bail plea of former congress cabinet minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu in food grains transportation tenders scam on Friday.
The court has also dismissed the anticipatory bail application of Inderjit Singh Indi, another Personal Assistant (PA) to Ashu. Indi was also nominated as an accused in the case. The vigilance had claimed that after Ashu’s arrest, Indi was handed over a bag which probably contained some documents and other important material. Indi is yet to be arrested.
Dismissing the bail application of Ashu the court ordered that at this stage, when the investigation is taken in its entirety, there is apparent involvement of the accused in the entire process right from the allotment of the tender. It is not in dispute that the applicant was the minister of the department, the specific role of the applicant is coming at this stage. The gravity of the offence and possibility of influencing witnesses are also much relevant considerations. Seeing the nature of allegations and gravity of offence, the bail application is dismissed.
Ashu, who was arrested by the vigilance bureau on August 22, has been lodged in Patiala jail on judicial remand.
In the orders the court said that the as per the vigilance bureau, contractor Telu Ram, who is a contractor, in a disclosure statement has said that first he paid ₹6 lakh to Pankaj Meenu Malhotra, Personal Assistant to Ashu, to facilitate talks with him and then he was directed to Singla to get his work done. He had paid ₹20 lakh to Singla on different dates, applied for the tender and also bagged it successfully. The court further said that some details of phone calls between Ashu, his PA Pankaj Meenu Malhotra, Singla and Telu Ram, have also been put on record, which shows their close connection.
Advocate Balwinder Singh, special public prosecutor, said that the court rejected Ashu’s bail plea on the grounds that the investigation was still at initial stage. He added that as the investigation is still on and names of more accused might come up in the case, the court observed that there were no grounds to grant bail to the former minister as witnesses might be influenced or records and other evidence might be tampered after his release.
Ashu’s counsels submitted that the former minister was falsely implicated in the case following political vendetta. The counsels also took the plea that the grain-lifting and transportation policy was framed by the Cabinet not by Ashu. The tenders were allotted through e-tenders in which Ashu had no role. Parupkar Singh Ghumman, counsel of Ashu said that they would move to Punjab and Haryana High court for the bail.
