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Punjab electoral battle heats up as ED arrests CM Channi’s kin
The arrest comes just days ahead of polling for the 117-member Punjab legislative assembly. Voting will be held on February 20, while the results will be out on March 10
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew, Bhupendra Singh Honey, in an illegal sand-mining case, triggering a fresh political slugfest in the state two weeks before elections. The ruling Congress termed the arrest a “political” move to “create pressure”, while the opposition demanded answers from the CM.
The arrest comes just days ahead of polling for the 117-member Punjab legislative assembly. Voting will be held on February 20, while the results will be out on March 10.
The ED on January 18 conducted raids at the premises of Singh, his business partners, and six miners in Mohali, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar, and Pathankot. The agency said it seized ₹10 crore and valuables from Bhupinder Singh and his partner Sandeep Kumar during the raids that continued till January 19.
Late on Thursday, the agency arrested Singh under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), after day-long questioning. Singh was later produced in a Jalandhar court, which remanded him in the central agency’s custody till February 8.
The ongoing ED investigations are based on a 2018 FIR registered at Rahon police station in Nawanshahr district regarding illegal sand mining.
In remand paper submitted before the court, ED claimed that during the course of searches, statements of Kudratdeep Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Santokh Singh (father of Bhupinder Singh) and Sandeep Kumar were, inter-alia, recorded u/s 17 of PMLA, whereby it has been established that the aforesaid cash actually belonged to Bhupinder Singh.
“Moreover, Bhupinder Singh has explicitly stated in his statement during search, inter-alia, that all cash which was seized from his residential premises at Ludhiana (Rs. 4.09 crores), Sandeep Kumar’s premises at Ludhiana ( ₹1.99 Crores) and from the Homeland House Premises at Mohali (Rs. 3.89 crores) actually pertained to him. He admitted to have generated such proceeds of crime through mining related activities including clearance of mining files and transfer of officials”, added ED.
ED further said that during the search at the premises of Bhupinder Singh at Ludhiana, various papers relating to mining activities of Malikpur Mine of Kudratdeep Singh as well as pages containing handwritten cash entries were recovered and seized. On being shown the same to the father of Bhupinder Singh, Santokh Singh, he stated, inter-alia that those documents related to sand mining activities and only his son. This further indicates that Bhupinder Singh is deeply involved in the illegal Sand mining activities of Malikpur Mine;
“Bhupinder Singh on being shown a copy of aforesaid seized documents pertaining to Malikpur Mine stated that he has no knowledge about the same. Despite of the fact that documents pertaining to Malikpur Mine were seized from his residential premises, which should be in his exclusive knowledge, he is giving evasive replies in this context. This clearly reveals his non-cooperative attitude towards the ongoing investigation under PMLA by hiding information which is in his exclusive knowledge”, ED concluded.
Reacting to the arrest, Channi on Friday said: “We have no objections with the law doing its work.”
Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, however, termed the arrest of “political”, which was done “to create pressure”.
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the people of the state will not be cowed down by these tactics ahead of the assembly elections and they have already made up their mind about re-electing Congress government in Punjab.
“BJP’s political ‘nautanki’ (gimmicks) in Punjab has started ahead of assembly elections. BJP’s ‘Election Department’ known as Enforcement Directorate has come on the field and an onslaught on Punjab and Punjabis has been launched for supporting the farmers’ agitation,” he told reporters.
He also termed the move an attempt to help “chotte Modi” (Delhi chief minister and national convener) Kejriwal’s party through the back door. “The conspiracy of the BJP’s ED will not be able to stop the Congress from returning to power.”
Meanwhile, rival parties launched an attack on the Congress government saying it cannot escape answerability.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha alleged that Singh had swindled the money during the 111 days of the Channi government. “Will the chief minister answer how Singh was provided with security, commandos and an escort vehicle?” He added that the people will punish the Congress in the February 20 polls.
Shiromani Akali Dal leader and former minister Bikram Singh Majithia, too, said Channi is answerable, and “the chief minister and his party must tell in what capacity Singh was given the security. The money seized is ill-gotten wealth”.
The ED has said Bhupinder Singh, Kumar, and Kudrat Deep Singh set up a firm named Provider Overseas Consultancy Limited in 2018 with 33.33% stakes each. The firm had a turnover of ₹18.77 lakh in 2019-2020, according to the audit report available on the website of the Union ministry of corporate affairs.
The Punjab Police first filed an alleged illegal sand mining case in the matter in 2018. In their First Information Report (FIR) in the case, they named 26 accused, mostly truck drivers. It was registered on the complaint of the Punjab mining department, which found sand quarries were being run without approval during its raids in 2018. Bhupinder Singh was not named in the FIR while Kudrat Deep Singh was exonerated following a police inquiry.
The ED lodged a separate case at its zonal office in Jalandhar in November last year after taking over the probe.
