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Top Punjab Congress leader picked up from hair salon amid high drama, arrested
Former Punjab minister and the state’s Congress working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu is the second minister in the previous Congress government to be arrested by vigilance bureau.
LUDHIANA: Amid high drama at a hair salon in posh Civil lines here, sleuths of the Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Monday arrested Punjab Congress working president and former food and supplies minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu for his alleged involvement in a case relating to the food grains transportation tender case.
In a video that went viral on social media, the former minister is seen sitting on a chair in a salon getting his hair cut even as Member of Parliament Ravneet Singh Bittu engages in a heated argument with the vigilance officials as to how they can take the former minister into custody without summons.
“The summons are arriving,” said the official. After high drama, Ashu and Bittu are seen sitting in their own vehicle agreeing to accompany the sleuths to the local vigilance office.
A government statement later said the former minister was placed under arrest in the August 16 case in which contractors Telu Ram, Jagroop Singh and Sandeep Bhatia besides owners of Gurdas Ram and Company have been booked.
The Vigilance Bureau earlier named Ashu’s personal assistant (PA) Meenu Pankaj Malhotra as an accused.
Ashu earlier petitioned the Punjab and Haryana high court for protection against arrest in the case relating to the allotment of labour and transport tenders for lifting grains in July. Raman Balasubramanium, the former chairman of Ludhiana Improvement Trust who is described as a loyalist of the former minister, was earlier also booked by the Vigilance Bureau in a case of corruption in the sale of the parcels of land. Vigilance officials said Balasubramanium is on the.
The vigilance department started investigating the case on a complaint by a man identified as Gurpreet Singh.
According to the vigilance bureau, it was found that the list of vehicles listed for labour, cartage and transportation works in Ludhiana district included registration numbers of scooters, motorcycles, cars and other vehicles, which were not verified by the officials concerned in the district tender committee due to criminal connivance.
Ashu’s arrest came hours after he along with other senior Punjab Congress leaders “presented” themselves at the Vigilance Bureau office in Mohali, saying it could detain any of them as they were fed up with the AAP government in Punjab levelling corruption allegations against them.
Bharat Bhushan Ashu is the second minister of the previous government in Punjab to be arrested. In June, the vigilance bureau arrested former minister and Congress leader Sadhu Singh Dharamsot on corruption charges.
