Ex-Gujarat minister Vipul Chaudhary sentenced to 7 years in prison for graft

Vipul Chaudhary was a minister in chief minister Keshubhai Patel’s government in the 1990s before he sided with Shankersinh Vaghela when he rebelled against the BJP

Updated on: Jul 13, 2023, 15:30:04 IST

By Maulik Pathak

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A Gujarat court on Thursday sentenced former minister Vipul Chaudhary, 57, and 14 others to seven-year imprisonment after convicting them in the case related to siphoning off ₹750 crore from the Mehsana District Milk Producers Federation, popularly known as Dudhsagar Dairy.

Chaudhary was the chairman of Dudhsagar Dairy when the scam occurred. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The diary is India’s largest co-operative dairy and part of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, which markets its products under the Amul brand name. Chaudhary was the diary’s chairman between 2005 and 2016 when the scam occurred.

The Mehsana district court acquitted four accused due to lack of evidence. The case dates back to 2014 when 22 people were accused of financial irregularities. Three of the accused passed away while 19 faced the trial. Testimonies from 23 witnesses were considered during the proceedings.

Chaudhary was a minister in chief minister Keshubhai Patel’s government in the 1990s. In 1996, he sided with Shankersinh Vaghela when he rebelled against Patel and formed the government with Congress’s help. Chaudhary served in the Vaghela government as a minister as well.

Chaudhary, who returned to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2001, formed a socio-political outfit in 2022. Gujarat’s anti-corruption branch arrested him in September last year for the irregularities when he headed Dudhsagar Dairy.

In February 2015, the state cooperative registrar ordered his removal from the Mehsana District Cooperative Milk Producers Union Limited over alleged financial irregularities. He was accused of taking unfair decisions as the chairman and supplying cattle feed to Maharashtra, causing losses.

Chaudhary was booked for breach of trust, cheating, forgery, producing forged documents as genuine, and criminal conspiracy, and under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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