E-Paper
Former Punjab DGP Saini vacates Chandigarh house attached by Mohali court
After attaching the two-kanal property — House Number 3048, Sector 20-D, Chandigarh — in July 2021, the court had also imposed a monthly rent of ₹2.5 lakh till the case is settled
Over 15 months after a Mohali court ordered provisional attachment of his “rented house” in Sector 20-D, Chandigarh, former Punjab DGP Sumedh Singh Saini has vacated the property and is learnt to have moved to Panchkula.
The security cover and the jammers installed in the house have been removed, along with other belongings of Saini.
After attaching the two-kanal property — House Number 3048, Sector 20-D — in July 2021, the court had also imposed a monthly rent of ₹2.5 lakh till the case is settled.
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.
The court of additional district and session judge PS Grewal had then directed the district collector to carry out attachment of the house by affixing a notice there and to receive a monthly rent of ₹2.5 lakh from Saini till further court orders.
The court had also directed the district treasury officer not to release the rent deposited.
Also, notices were 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 the provisional attachment not be made absolute.
According to the bureau’s probe, Jaspal had 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 was ever received. Instead, ₹6.4 crore were paid by Saini to Jaspal without any sale agreement, as per the probe.
Later, a fabricated agreement was allegedly placed on record, which was neither on stamp paper nor attested by any witness, and was signed only by Saini and Jaspal.
Saini could not be immediately contacted for his comment.
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.
