The Tarn Taran police arrested Gurdaspur sub divisional magistrate Anupreet Kaur Randhawa, a 2012-batch Punjab Civil Services (PCS) officer, from her official residence on Saturday in connection with a 2019 embezzlement case involving ₹1.63 crore meant for land acquisition for National Highway 54 (NH-54), which connects Jammu to Rajasthan via Amritsar and Bathinda.
Tarn Taran senior superintendent of police Surendra Lamba confirmed the development and said that a police team from Patti raided her Gurdaspur residence following developments in a related petition currently pending before the Punjab and Haryana high court.
Fraudulent payoffs
The scam dates back to 2019 when Anupreet was serving as the SDM of Patti and acted as the competent authority for land acquisition. On September 5, 2019, police booked her along with five others after an investigation found that ₹1.63 crore in highway compensation had been fraudulently transferred to the five co-accused—none of whose land had actually been acquired for the project.
The state government had initially placed her under suspension for six months after the then Tarn Taran deputy commissioner, Pardeep Kumar Sabharwal, reported a fraudulent ₹40.6 lakh chunk of the compensation and ordered an inquiry.
More legal trouble
{{/usCountry}}More legal trouble
{{/usCountry}}This is not the officer’s only legal battle. In 2021, on a complaint by the subsequent Patti SDM Navraj Singh Brar, the Tarn Taran city police registered a separate case against Anupreet and her brother, Sandeep Singh. They were booked for allegedly bungling an additional ₹88 lakh from the state exchequer—a case closely linked to the ₹1.63-crore highway scam.
Charges against her across these investigations include criminal breach of trust by a public servant, cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy under Sections 409, 419, 420, 120-B, 465, 467, 468, and 471 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).