Chandigarh: How an accused-turned-approver led to conviction of ex-EOW DSP

In 2015, a case of forgery and cheating was registered by the Chandigarh Police on complaint of Deepa Duggal against G S Chawla, his wife Jagjeet Kaur, son H S Chawla, G S Bhatti (father-in-law of H S Chawla), and Sarabjit Singh (friend of Bhatti) at a police station in Sector 17, for forging the documents to get loan from bank for a property being sold by Duggal at Sector 9, Chandigarh.

Similarly, a case was registered against Duggal at police station in Sector 3 on the complaint of G S Chawla that she concealed the facts of the Sector 9 property she was selling as it was a matter sorted out between her family in the court. Both the matters were thus being investigated by the EOW of Chandigarh Police.

But then, Guneet Kaur, daughter of G S Chawla, gave a complaint to the CBI that the EOW officials have been demanding Rs 40 lakh for settling out the case and for not arresting his father.

Acting on the complaint, the CBI had then laid a trap in August 2015 and arrested Meena along with Sub Inspector (SI) Surinder Kumar Bhardwaj from the EOW office at Sector 17, in August 2015. The CBI had also arrested two businessmen Aman Grover, owner of KLG Hotel, and Sanjay Dahuja, owner of Berkeley Automobiles (car dealership) for allegedly accepting the bribe for DSP Meena and SI Bhardwaj (passed away during trial).

Dahuja, meanwhile, was initially roped in as an accused in this case on the strength of allegations of prosecution that he had acted as a conspirator in this case as he was allegedly involved in negotiation between the Chawla’s on one side and the Duggal’s on the other. He was duly named as an accused in the charge-sheet by the CBI and the court too had found a strong prima facie case against him and had proceeded to frame charges against him under various provisions. Thereafter, he moved the court with an application seeking permission to become an approver and promising to state on oath all the relevant events, which had taken place between the parties, thus, assisting the court to reach a just and fair decision. The CBI too had no objection to the move made by the holder of very important link evidence in this case.

In March 2020, Dahuja was permitted to become an approver and tender of pardon was granted to him subject to the condition of his making a full and true disclosure of the whole circumstances within his knowledge relating to the offence.

Analysing the testimony of Dahuja, the CBI court arrived at the conclusion that “he (Dahuja) had indeed deposed a complete and truthful account of the entire incident in this case without withholding any relevant and incriminating information. The evidence of Dahuja has helped the court in understanding the case better and in fishing out the truth even as almost thousand pages of cross-examination of the witnesses made by the defence led the court to absolutely nowhere as the core issue was never touched and it was more about the beating about the bushes”.

“Let it be made absolutely clear here that the CBI has led very convincing and full proof evidence to nail the actual culprits by examining various witnesses… besides leading scientific and electronic evidence. The statement of the approver has merely helped the court to connect the dots,” justice Malik noted.