E-Paper
8 land in Punjab VB net for illegally obtaining land compensation
The spokesperson said a fake girdawari register was prepared by them in 2019 in collusion with Bachitar, wherein they obtained compensation worth crores illegally by showing that they owned guava orchards since 2016
The Punjab vigilance bureau (VB) on Tuesday arrested eight persons, including a revenue official, for allegedly receiving huge compensations from Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) on forged documents during acquisition of land in connivance with officials of horticultural and revenue departments from 2016 to 2020.
A VB spokesperson said Bhupinder Singh, Mukesh Jindal, Shaman Jindal, Praveen Lata, Vishal Bhandari, Sukhdev Singh, Binder Singh, and Bachitar Singh, patwari, revenue halqa Bakarpur (now kanungo), Mohali, have been arrested. Officials of horticultural department -- Jaspreet Singh, Vaishali, Dinesh Kumar, Rashmi Arora, Anil Arora, and Vishal Bhandari -- have not been nabbed yet.
The VB had found that in 2016, GMADA published notices in Mohali for acquisition of land pertaining to various villages and issued notifications in 2020. Meanwhile, Bhupinder, a property dealer, in alleged connivance with employees of GMADA, revenue and horticulture departments, started developing guava orchards after getting land on general power of attorneys, according to the VB release.
The spokesperson said a fake girdawari register was prepared by them in 2019 in collusion with Bachitar, wherein they obtained compensation worth crores illegally by showing that they owned guava orchards since 2016.
During the probe, it was found that Bhupinder had taken compensation of around ₹24 crore. Similarly, Mukesh, a resident of Bathinda, had allegedly received ₹20 crore. Further investigation is under progress, the spokesperson said.
