Court issues arrest warrant against former Ludhiana Improvement Trust chief

Another accused Sandeep Sharma, PA to the former chairman, who was arrested on Thursday, was produced in court and sent in three-days of police remand, said a vigilance bureau official.

“Two other accused — executive officer Kuljit Kaur and sales clerk Parveen Kumar — who are already in jail in another bribery case, are being brought on production warrant for interrogation in this case,” added the official.

Apart from Balasubramanium, five others booked by the vigilance bureau include 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.

The fresh FIR has been registered two weeks after two of these officials—- Kuljit Kaur and Parveen Kumar —- were arrested by vigilance sleuths on July 14 after they were allegedly caught accepting bribe of Rs 10,000 for the re-allotment of a booth, the complaint of a local resident.

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.

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.

An FIR under the sections 7, 7-A, 8, 12, 13 (2) of Prevention of Corruption Act and 409, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the IPC was registered against six officials at Economic Offences Wing of Vigilance Bureau, Ludhiana.