Cheating case against 2 directors of Chandigarh parking firm: Probe shifted to EOW

The parking contract company failed to pay the licence fee of Rs 7 crore and later it submitted three BGs of Rs 1.67 crore which were found to be fake.

“The cheated amount runs into crores of rupees. The police station personnel are allowed to probe a fraud, cheating case involving the amount upto Rs 1 crore. M/s Paschatya Entertainment Private Limited committed the cheating of more than Rs 1 crore. The amount can be increased more. The EOW is competent to probe the matter involving more than Rs 1 crore. Hence, the probe was transferred to the EOW,” said Inspector Om Parkash, SHO of Sector 17 police station.

As per details, M/s Paschatya Entertainment Private Limited — the firm that previously managed parking in Chandigarh — had submitted three bank guarantees worth Rs 1.65 crore to the Chandigarh MC in lieu of parking contracts.

Interestingly, the management of Syndicate Bank (now merged with Canara Bank) had in February 2020 issued and confirmed the genuineness of the three bank guarantees (amounting to a total of Rs 1,65,33,333) of the company to the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation.

These guarantees, later however, were rejected by Canara Bank when the municipal corporation tried to encash the same after the parking company failed to submit their licence fee of Rs 7 crore for 57 parking lots on February 3 this year. Subsequently, a police case for fraud was filed.

Most of the parking lots operationalised

The Municipal Corporation Wednesday operationalised almost all the 87 parking lots divided into three zones in Chandigarh. As many as 27 parking lots out of 87 were operationalised on Tuesday. The outsource contractual employees were deployed in these parking lots for issuing parking fee slips through 173 point of sales (POS) machines provided by the ICICI Bank. These parking lots are managed by the Road Engineering Wing of the MC. XEN Ajay Garg of Road Engineering Wing said, “We have operationalised almost all the parking lots which were lying abandoned. The parking fees are being charged from 9 am to 12 in the night.” As per details, Rs 14 is the fee for parking four-wheelers and Rs 7 for two-wheelers.