M A I N   N E W S

30-month jail for former IAS officer
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 1
Special CBI Judge Darshan Singh here today sentenced former Punjab IAS officer Bikramjit Singh to two-and-a-half year imprisonment for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. A fine of Rs 30,000 was also slapped on him.

Pronouncing the judgement, the court observed that instead of becoming a role model for his subordinates, the accused misused his post and accumulated wealth through unfair means. The court, however, granted him bail against a bond Rs 1 lakh with a liberty to file an appeal against the verdict within a month.

Bikramjit was convicted in a 13-year-old case registered against him by the CBI following an anonymous complaint. Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal was the Chief Minister then. The court found him guilty of have amassed illegal wealth worth about Rs 25 lakh.

Known to be a Badal loyalist, the 1973-batch IAS officer was appointed as the principal secretary to Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal a day after the latter took over the reins from Bhattal on February 12, 1997. Though Badal issued directions to quash the notification of handing over of Bikramjit’s case to CBI, the latter protested the move stating that a case had already been registered.

The Badal government, however, kept on shielding him by not sanctioning his prosecution and it was only on January 25, 2002, that a chargesheet could be filed in the case after Capt Amarinder Singh became the Chief Minister. Before joining the IAS, Singh took early retirement from the Army where he was a captain.

Notably, it is for the first time that the special CBI court at Chandigarh has convicted a former IAS officer of Punjab.