E-Paper
Panchayat grant scam: Declared PO 18 months ago, ex-Moga BDPO arrested
Former Moga block development and panchayat officer (BDPO-1) Jaspreet Singh, who was declared proclaimed offender (PO) by a court in a corruption case 18 months
Former Moga block development and panchayat officer (BDPO-1) Jaspreet Singh, who was declared proclaimed offender (PO) by a court in a corruption case 18 months ago, was arrested on Thursday from a Ferozepur village when he was on duty.
The ‘tainted’ officer, who is posted as a social education security officer, was suspended in May 2017 and was reinstated in July last year despite having been declared a PO.
A Moga court on Thursday sent him to one-day police remand. At the time of his reinstatement, he was posted at Fate¬hgarh Churian in Gurdaspur district, it is learnt, but the police claimed to have no clue of him.
Jaspreet was sus¬pended after it was found that Jaspreet as BDPO (Moga-1), Dhurkot panchayat sarpanch Sarab¬jit Kaur and pan¬chayat sec¬re¬tary Karam Singh had em¬bez-zled ₹59 lakh grant.
In 2017, Dhurkot vil¬lage re¬ceived a grant of ₹71 lakh for providing com¬pen¬sa¬tion for acquiring land for four-lan¬ing of the Ja¬land¬har-Bar¬nala stretch. Of the ₹71 lakh, over ₹57 lakh was with¬drawn from the pan¬chayat ac¬count be¬tween Jan¬uary and March in 2017 and it was shown that the amount was spent on de¬vel¬op¬ment projects. But not a sin¬gle penny was spent on any de¬vel¬op¬ment work. The amount was re¬port¬edly spent when the model code of con¬duct was in force. This despite the fact that no of¬fi¬cial is al¬lowed to with¬draw funds from the gov¬ern¬ment ex¬che¬quer for any pur¬pose during the pe¬riod.
A case was registered against the three.
Though po¬lice ar¬rested Karam Singh, Jaspreet and Sarab¬jit were de¬clared PO by the court af¬ter their an¬tic¬i¬pa¬tory bail was re¬jected. Sarbjit Kaur is learnt to have fled the country.
Dharamkot deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Yadvinder Singh Bajwa said they nabbed Jaspreet from Ghall Khurd village in Ferozepur district. Over the delay in arrest, Bajwa said he was transferred to Dharamkot recently and thus is not aware of the matter.
Another embezzlement case
Jaspreet Singh was sus¬pended for the first time on March 22, 2017, af¬ter an em¬bez¬zle-ment of ₹26.6 lakh at Ra¬muwala Kalan vil¬lage pan¬chayat was reported.
Be¬sides Jaspreet, the state ru¬ral de¬vel¬op¬ment and pan¬chayat de¬part¬ment had also sus-pended Moga-1 pan¬chayat sec¬re¬tary Ra¬jwant Singh and di¬rected re¬tired IAS of¬fi¬cer RC Nay¬yar to probe the mat¬ter. This scam was also com¬mit¬ted when the model code of con¬duct was in force.
