E-Paper
Suspect paid ₹50L to get SAIL chairman killed: Police
New Delhi
New Delhi
Investigations into the alleged attack on SAIL chairman, Anil Kumar Chaudhary, has revealed that a private contractor, Ashok Kumar Singh, had promised to pay Rs 50 lakh to the property dealer Sunil Balara, for allegedly getting Chaudhary killed, the police said.
The conspiracy to kill Chaudhary was hatched two months before the actual attack took place outside Hudco Place LAST MONTH, police said. Chaudhary survived the attack.
Singh, who was arrested on Friday by a crime branch team, was granted bail on Monday by a Delhi court.
The other six men arrested in the case are yet to get bail, the police said. Singh’s counsel N Hariharan has dismissed the police’s allegations and said that the case ‘was full of loopholes’.
A police officer associated with the case said that Singh got the Rs100 crore coal supply contract from SAIL through Balara’s contacts in the company. Singh had promised $1 per tonne as commission to Balara for helping him bag the deal.
“Since Singh was a new player in the coal supply business, the material he imported from the USA was of poor quality and didn’t match the standard set by SAIL. SAIL rejected the material and cancelled Singh’s contract, which caused him a loss of around Rs 85 crore,” said the officer.
The officer said that despite repeated attempts, Singh failed to convince SAIL chairman (Chaudhary) to accept the coal supplied by him and clear his pending bills. He then conspired with Balara to get Chaudhary killed. “Balara approached his brother-in-law Satender Katyan, alias Chutku, who hired four men from Delhi’s Nangloi for the hit job. The kingpin among the four was Om Prakash. He demanded Rs 6 lakh for the job. Singh agreed to pay the amount and paid Rs 2 lakh as advance. The rest was to be paid after the job was done,” said the officer.
Singh’s counsel, however, disproved the police’s theoryu and said that investigators have failed to establish his client’s relationship with the company that the police claimed belonged to him. “ The police case is based on the statement of four persons. It was road rage first and now they say that the case is something else. My client is not at all involved. He is being framed. The court considered our submission and granted him bail.”
Police said the fact that the attack on Chaudhary was dressed as a road rage incident first emerged when the the four attackers were nabbed. Their cellphone records showed that they were in regular contact with two men, one of who had links in SAIL.
“Prakash was interrogated and confronted with the technical evidence, after which he broke down and confessed to being hired by Katyan and Balara for killing Chaudhary. We arrested the duo and they spilled the beans on Singh,” the officer added.
Police said they are probing the role of some more people in the case.
