Journalism of Courage
A DECADE later, the Punjab vigilance bureau (VB), tearing into its own inquiry report of 2007 in the alleged Rs 1,144-crore Ludhiana city center scam, has flayed the earlier inquiry in a closure report submitted in court Saturday. Rebutting the 2007 inquiry, the closure report gives point-wise ‘replies’ to the accusations levelled against the accused, including Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, his son Raninder Singh, son-in-law Raminder Singh and others.
The inquiry in 2007 was conducted by IGP-and-director, VB, and later completed by a team of three SPs under the supervision of DIG (VB). The then SP (vigilance), Ludhiana, Kanwarjit Singh Sandhu, on the basis of enquiry, filed an FIR on March 23, 2007. The two reports (2007 and 2017) submitted in court are contradictory and the closure report goes on to say that accusations levelled against the accused in the chargesheet are “non-existent.”
The 2007 inquiry report says, “Loss to the exchequer and wrongful gain to M/S Today Homes is estimated at Rs 1,500-3,000 crore at least. Enquiries conducted by the officers of VB, pursual of relevant documents and evidence and pursual of relevant files of the local bodies department show that the persons culpable for the various offences committed are Captain Amarinder Singh, former CM, Punjab, Jagjit Singh, former minister…” (and others). The closure report, however, said, “There is no solid evidence to say there was any financial loss in the project. There is no proof of any bungling or scam. It is all fictional and doubtful.”
The inquiry says Captain Amarinder Singh allegedly removed former chairman of Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) Ashok Singh Garcha because he wanted to ‘fit’ a close aide Paramjit Singh Sibia. But the closure report says, “Garcha was removed by Captain on the basis of suspicion that he was going to form a new political party. There is no proof that Captain wanted to ‘fit’ his close aide Sibia.”The enquiry says that “as per Garcha’s statement, the Congress wanted funding of Rs 100 crore for Punjab polls from this project” and that “he got a call from Jagjit Singh saying that project should be announced urgently as per the desire of the government.”
The closure report says that this allegation is also “baseless” because “no document proof has been found for the same.” “The case file is completely mum on this,” it adds. The inquiry says that three representatives of Today Homes were “filmed agreeing to accept black money for sale of fraudulently procured property.” The closure report says that the police “never got the original CD” and that one in its record cannot be “counted as evidence” because “there is no report of its forensic testing and authenticity record.”
The inquiry says Captain Amarinder Singh deliberately extended the “date of bid tenders” to ‘benefit Today Homes’ from April 20, 2005 to May 10,2005. The closure report says, “The dates were extended for welfare of people as city center was a high quality project and there was a tough fight amid various companies. There is no evidence to prove that date was extended to benefit any company.” The inquiry says that “the design plan of the project was changed to favour the company.”
The closure report, putting a question mark on its own evidence submitted in court, says, “We had submitted a project design map in the court procured from LIT. It showed project area as 25.59 acres whereas a map with the company showed total area as 29.22 acres. The extra 3.63 acres were for road and green belts, not for the company’s possession.”
Chetan Gupta, one of the accused in the FIR, filed an application for re-investigation with vigilance on March 7, 2017, three days before the Punjab Assembly poll results were announced on March 11. A decade after the chargesheet was filed in a Ludhiana court, charges have not been framed yet against any of the accused.
