Graft case: Court junks anticipatory bail plea of LIT’s ex-chairman, two others

Initially, an FIR was lodged on July 14  against three  employees, executive officer Kuljit Kaur, junior assistant, Harmit Singh and sales clerk Parveen Kumar after they were allegedly caught red-handed accepting a bribe of Rs 10,000 for the re-allotment of a booth on the basis of a complaint filed by a local. Parveen Kumar and Kuljit Kaur were arrested by the bureau on the same day.

Later, a fresh FIR was lodged against six people on July 28  — former LIT chairman Raman Balasubramaniam, executive officer Kuljit Kaur, sales clerk Parveen Kumar, SDO Ankit Narang, junior assistant Gaganadeep Goyal and Sandeep Sharma, who was the PA to former Ludhiana Improvement Trust chairman Balasubramaniam. Sandeep Sharma was arrested on July 28 but Balasubramaniam continues to be at large.

A senior officer of the vigilance bureau said that during investigations in the bribery case of July 14, it has been found that Ludhiana Improvement Trust officials “adopted corrupt practices” in the allotment of several plots. The officer further said that these plots were under the Local Displaced Persons (LDP) and other schemes of the trust, but were instead allotted to ‘unauthorised persons’ after taking huge amounts of bribe.

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It was found that some of the allottees had died and their plots had been allotted to some unauthorised persons, violating prescribed rules , the officer added.