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Saturday,
April 20, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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8.16 cr found in Sidhu’s lockers
Chandigarh, April 19 With today’s recovery, the amount of Sidhu’s wealth uncovered by the Vigilance Department goes up to Rs 25 crore. This includes property, National Saving Certificates and investments in shares of blue chip companies. The department hopes to recover more by opening more lockers. Today’s haul will be deposited in the Treasury. The cash had been kept in neat piles. Amounts varying between Rs 1.61 crore and Rs 1.64 crore had been kept in each of the lockers. The money was primarily in bundles of Rs 500 notes. The lockers were bigger in size than the normal lockers. A special room within the room for the normal lockers has a row where large lockers are located. The Vigilance Department will also focus on other bank lockers of Sidhu following a tip-off by Jagman Singh, an accomplice in his misdeeds, who was arrested yesterday. The focus of the Department will now be on people who have secured jobs by paying bribes to Sidhu. Last night, special teams were formed to probe the links of people who may have paid money to secure jobs. Sources said that people who have paid such huge sums to get jobs have to be from well-off families. The IG Vigilance, Mr A.P. Pandey, when asked by mediapersons, said people who have paid to secure jobs could be prosecuted under law. It would depend upon the evidence gathered during investigation. Even the role of the Secretary of the PPSC, Mr Prithipal Singh, would be looked into. Four touts of Sidhu had absconded, Mr Pandey said. Meanwhile, the SP, Vigilance, Mr Jaskaran Singh, confirmed that Rs 1 crore had been sent to Luxembourg in Europe through hawala channels. This morning, the Vigilance Department descended on the bank armed with court orders to break open the lockers. In the seven-hour operation, the team broke open the lockers located in the basement using a drill. Four lockers are in the name of Sidhu’s brother Preetinder Singh and his wife who live in the USA. One locker is in the name of Sidhu’s mother.  |
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Role of banks under scrutiny Chandigarh, April
19 All five lockers opened at the
local branch of Indus Ind Bank on Madhya Marg today to recover “unaccounted
Rs 8.16 crore in cash”, had been in the “unauthorised possession”
of the PPSC Chairman and his alleged accomplices for varying periods
of time. The Vigilance Bureau is yet to obtain legal sanction to
open the remaining three lockers, one of which is in the other branch
of Indus Ind Bank. The remaining two are in Punjab and Sind Bank, one
each in Sector 9 and Sector 22. The Vigilance Bureau is also
investigating the possibility of investments in immovable property
outside Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh besides the Union
Territory of Chandigarh. The investigators have got leads on the
possible investments in real estate in Mumbai, Bangalore and a few
other places. But these are yet to be verified. Investigations reveal
that the Indus Ind lockers were put at the disposal of Jagman Singh, a
key figure in the “corruption expose” case, some time in 1999. Two
of these lockers were regularised only in July, 2001, and the
remaining three were “legally” allotted to their present clients
in February this year. The “clandestine use” of the lockers is in
serious violation of the banking and safe deposit norms. It is not
only a question of “unauthorised possession of lockers” but also
their operation which was conducted by Jagman Singh alone in the names
of the “rightful allottees”. This , feel the investigators, was
not possible without the active involvement and consent of the bank
officials concerned. Further, the bank allegedly opened accounts in
the names of Ranjit Singh, Jarnail Singh, Inder Singh and Ashwani
Kumar without these persons ever visiting the bank. All this was done
in the handwriting of Jagman Singh who confessed he used to “operate
these accounts” on his own. “My only interest was to get some
financial limits against these accounts,” he is alleged to have told
the investigators. For example, the opening and operation of the
accounts in the names of Ravi Sidhu’s brother and sister-in-law were
perhaps done when they were probably not in India. The disappearance
of Reetinder Singh Sidhu immediately after he filed a habeas corpus
petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court is “baffling”. There
is also no information about the whereabouts of Mrs Pritpal Kaur,
alias Mrs Gurcharan Singh, the mother of the PPSC Chairman. The
last-minute withdrawals from banks on March 26 by Jagman Singh, feel
the investigators, was a “foolish and hasty step” as the statement
for a particular banking period would have provided details about the
money in the account at a particular point of time. “This was a
panicky step,” feel the investigators. The Vigilance men may be on
the trail of some of the key bank officials whose conduct has been “suspicious”
in the entire episode beginning in 1999. These banks are not the first
ones to figure on the “doubtful list” as in the past there have
been instances when in another major corruption case pertaining to the
Chandigarh Administration, a contractor was allegedly operating 20-odd
accounts which he had “fictitiously opened” in another Sector 8
private bank. In one case, the account remained “operational” for
some years even after the death of the account holder in an “accident”. “We
are looking into the role of bankers in the Sidhu case,” remarked a
senior Vigilance official. |
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Sidhu alleges torture in jail
Ropar, April 19 In another application, he alleged that he was suffering from serious ailments like diabetes and hypertension. He demanded that the Superintendent of the jail should be ordered to get him examined immediately by the jail doctor and then at the PGI, Chandigarh. The judge, after a prolonged deliberation on the
arguments of the counsel of Ravi Sidhu, passed an order stating that the jail Superintendent “may” provide B-class facilities to Ravi Sidhu. In response to the second application of Ravi Sidhu, the judge directed the jail Superintendent to provide proper medical treatment to Ravi Sidhu in jail and said he “may” be allowed to continue treatment at any of the specialised institutes in which he was undergoing treatment earlier. The counsel of Sidhu, however, pleaded that he should he allowed treatment at the PGI. They sought the deletion of the word “may” from the judgement on the plea that it left the discretion of the implementation of order with the jail authorities. The judge, however, declined to amend the orders. Earlier, the
Add ional Sessions-cum-Special Judge, Ropar, extended the judicial remand of Ravi Sidhu till May 2. In another development, the anticipatory bail of an alleged agent of Ravi Sidhu, Shamsher Singh of Panchkula, was also rejected. He had moved an application for anticipatory bail in the court of the Sessions Judge. KHARAR: Mr Roshan Lal
Chouhan, Judicial Magistrate, on Friday remanded Jagman Singh, an accomplice of Ravi Sidhu arrested by the Vigilance Department after the recovery of Rs 1.2 crore from his possession, in police remand till April 20. The court also ordered that the accused should be produced in the same court at 11 a.m. on April 20. The
Public Prosecutor, Mr Jatinder Pal Singh
Punn, Mr Surjeet Singh Khosa (DSP, Vigilance) and Mr Onkar Singh Mitha (Inspector, Vigilance) appeared in the court and demanded a two-day police remand for the accused. They informed the court that the amount was placed with the accused by the brother of Ravi Sidhu after his arrest and this amount was recovered from the residence of the accused in Chandigarh. They pleaded that more information was yet to be collected from the accused about the other transactions concerning Ravi Sidhu. The court offered services of a lawyer to the accused, but he refused and told the court that he wanted to help the investigation voluntarily. The Public Prosecutor moved an application in the court seeking permission to deposit this amount in the government treasury as the police did not have proper arrangements for keeping such a big amount. The court ordered that this amount should be deposited on April 20 in the State Bank of Patiala, Kharar branch, in the court account. |
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