E-Paper
Industrial land for real estate: Court sends 3 PSIEC officers to judicial custody; police remand of one extended
Mohali court extended the police remand of one of the arrested officers of the PSIEC and sent three others to judicial custody after the Vigilance Bureau (VB) produced four of the seven arrested officers in the case of an alleged illegal transfer of an industrial plot to a real estate company
A Mohali court on Wednesday extended the police remand of one of the arrested officers of the Punjab Small Industries Export Corporation (PSIEC) and sent three others to judicial custody after the Vigilance Bureau (VB) produced four of the seven arrested officers in the case of an alleged illegal transfer of an industrial plot to a real estate company and allowing it to establish a township in Phase-9 Industrial area.
Last week, the VB registered a criminal case against former industries and commerce minister Sunder Sham Arora, already in jail and 10 government officers, including IAS officer Neelima.
The bureau arrested seven officials including estate officer Ankur Chaudhary, general manager (personnel) Davinderpal Singh, chief general manager (planning) JS Bhatia, ATP (planning) Ashima Aggarwal, executive engineer Parminder Singh, DA Rajat Kumar, and SDE Sandeep Singh.
Of the arrested accused, the VB produced Ankur Chaudhary, JS Bhatia, Parminder Singh and Sandeep Singh to the local court on Wednesday. The court, however, extended Ankur Chaudhary’s police remand by one day and sent the other three to judicial remand.
The FIR was registered under Sections 13 (1) (a), 13 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy at the vigilance bureau police station, Mohali. The role of various other persons would also be investigated during the probe. During the VB probe till now, it has been found that if this plot was to be sold as per the rules, the government would have got an income of ₹600 crore to ₹700 crore. At the time of the sale of 125 plots by Gulmohar Township, no proposal report, project report, articles of association and memorandum of association was demanded from any buyer party and all plots were sold illegally, the probe has revealed.
