E-Paper
Mohali land fraud: Punjab govt suffered ₹4-crore loss, says VB
The Punjab government suffered losses as the layout plans of two colonies developed by WWICS on the Siswan-Kurali road in Mohali were approved fraudulently
A day after the Punjab vigilance bureau probing a land fraud case arrested WorldWide Immigration Consultancy Services (WWICS) director Davinder Sandhu, it has come to light that the state government suffered a loss of around ₹4 crore as the layout plans of two colonies developed by his firm on the Siswan-Kurali road in Mohali were approved fraudulently.
Former Punjab police chief Sumedh Singh Saini was the first to be arrested in the case on Wednesday, though he was released on Thursday after orders of the Punjab and Haryana high court.
Shakti Sagar Bhatia, who retired as a senior town planner, was arrested on Thursday morning and sent to two-day police remand. Sandhu was held later in the evening, and was produced in court on Friday. He has also been remanded in two-day police custody for further questioning.
Ashok Sika, who retired as a deputy director, local bodies, is another accused in the case. He is absconding.
It was on September 17, 2020, when the vigilance bureau had registered a case against Sandhu, Sika and Bhatia for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy besides under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Saini’s name was nominated in the FIR on August 2 this year.
The names of Nimratdeep Singh, who is an executive engineer with the public works department, his father Surinderjit Singh Jaspal and their aides Taranjeet Singh Aneja and Mohit Puri were also later nominated in the FIR.
The case and role of key players
In 2009, WWICS developed two residential colonies — Green Meadows-1 and Green Meadows-2 — on 27 acres of land along the Siswan-Kurali road in Mohali.
In effect, it was a single colony as there was only one main entrance via Green Meadows-1, and In the layout plan, a rivulet passing between the two colonies was fraudulently shown as a green belt.
In this way, the firm paid only ₹1.5 crore fee to the government, instead of ₹5.5 crore that was required to be paid for a single bigger colony, and caused ₹4-crore loss to the state exchequer, said the vigilance bureau.
According to the FIR, shamlat land (village common land) measuring around 2 kanal was also illegally occupied to construct the main gate. The company also cut some residential plots on this land, which were later washed away in rains.
Deputy superintendent of police (vigilance) Harinder Pal Singh, who is the investigating officer, said Sika and Bhatia are accused of approving the layout plans without any physical checking. He said that during the probe it was also found that Nimratdeep Singh, a well-connected PWD official, reportedly received ₹6 crore as bribe from Sandhu to get the colonies certified.
Saini’s name cropped up in the case as Nimratdeep allegedly spent the bribe money on buying a two-kanal house in Sector 20, Chandigarh, where the former top cop started residing as a tenant on October 15, 2018, for a monthly rent of ₹2.50 lakh.
The vigilance bureau said after analysing financial transactions between Saini and Nimratdeep’s father, it was found that Saini had transferred ₹6.4 crore into the bank accounts of the father-son duo between August 2018 and August 2020. It has been alleged that the amount was not given in accordance with the rent deed.
Nimratdeep had claimed that Saini wanted to buy the house for which they had a verbal agreement. However, as the new facts emerged during the probe, the father-son duo allegedly furnished a copy of a fake sale agreement, executed on October 2, 2019, in order to prevent attachment of the property in a local court. Thereafter, names of the father-son duo along with their two aides were nominated in the land fraud case.
