Punjab DIG Graft Case: Court directs Jail Superintendent to preserve CCTV footage, records of those meeting middleman

Meanwhile, no advocate appeared for Sharda during the hearing ion a CBI plea seeking his 12-day police. Sharda was produced before the court through video conferencing. The court on Monday had issued notice to the defence counsel for the hearing on Tuesday.

“However, Advocate AS Sukhija appeared before the court, in pursuance of notice…and suffered a statement recorded separately that he has been representing accused H.S. Bhullar only in the case in hand and has never been engaged by accused Kirshanu Sharda. None represented accused Kirshanu Sharda before the court today. As such, accused Kirshanu Sharda be physically produced before the court on 29.10.2025,” read the court order.

The order also said that Sharda has been apprised through video conferencing to get a counsel engaged in the meanwhile. “If he fails to engage some counsel, legal aid counsel’s assistance would be provided to him to deal with the application in hand,” the court said.

A resident of Nabha in Punjab’s Patiala district, Sharda emerged as the key co-accused in the high-profile corruption case against Bhullar. Once a national-level hockey player, Sharda is said to have reinvented himself as a “fixer”, leveraging his extensive network within police and political circles to facilitate illicit deals, including bribery for resolving legal disputes.

He served as the crucial “deal broker” and middleman in a Rs-8 lakh bribery case allegedly orchestrated by DIG Bhullar to settle a 2023 FIR against scrap dealer Naresh Batta at Sirhind police station. CBI investigators trapped Sharda red-handed in Chandigarh’s Sector 21 market while he accepted a token amount of Rs 1 lakh as bribe, following a recorded WhatsApp conversation where Bhullar explicitly instructed him to “collect Rs 8 lakh” and referenced prior unpaid bribes for August and September.

During raids on Sharda’s residence, the CBI seized Rs 21 lakh in cash (which Sharda later claimed belonged to Bhullar), incriminating documents, and other items, though some reports conflate these with recoveries from Bhullar’s properties totalling over Rs 7.5 crore in cash, 2 kg of gold, luxury watches, and deeds of 50 properties.