JAMMU: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday carried out searches at eight premises of RB Educational Trust run by former Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Lal Singh’s family in connection with allegations of laundering proceeds of crime in a 2020 land-grabbing case by the trust.
An ED official said the searches were being carried out at premises in Jammu and Kathua areas of Jammu and Kashmir, and Pathankot in Punjab.
The ED case is based on a first information report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in September 2020 on charges of the allegations of illegal possession and encroachment of land by said educational trust. The agency filed a charge sheet in October 2021 in the case against the then chairperson of the trust, Kanta Andotra, wife of former minister Lal Singh, Ravinder Singh, then patwari of Patwar Halqa Karandi Khurd and Muthi Hardo in 2011.
The trust runs a school, BEd (Bachelor of Education) and nursing colleges on the land, transactions of which are being probed by the central agency for alleged irregularities in their purchase.
According to CBI, revenue officials, in connivance with the other accused, allegedly issued three farads (maps describing measurement, directions and size of land) of over 329 kanals of land between January 4 and January 11, 2011, without mentioning the details in respect of the ceiling of 100 standard kanals imposed under the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act. The mutations were attested, thus facilitating the illegal acquisition of land beyond the ceiling limit by the said educational trust in gross violation of the land reform laws.
{{/usCountry}}According to CBI, revenue officials, in connivance with the other accused, allegedly issued three farads (maps describing measurement, directions and size of land) of over 329 kanals of land between January 4 and January 11, 2011, without mentioning the details in respect of the ceiling of 100 standard kanals imposed under the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act. The mutations were attested, thus facilitating the illegal acquisition of land beyond the ceiling limit by the said educational trust in gross violation of the land reform laws.
{{/usCountry}}As news of the raids spread, scores of Lal Singh’s supporters gathered outside his house in Kathua and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of vendetta politics and engineering the ED raids.
Lal Singh, who was the forest minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government, resigned from the BJP in 2018 after questions were raised over his participation rally organised in support of the accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Kathua.