Vinay Kumar Bansal (in green) with ACB officials Thursday. (Express photo)
The Delhi government’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) Thursday arrested Vinay Kumar Bansal, son of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s late brother-in-law Surender Kumar Bansal, in connection with the alleged PWD scam. Last year, the ACB had registered three separate FIRs in the alleged scam, including one against Surender Bansal’s company — M/s Renu Construction Company. Confirming the arrest, ACB chief Arvind Deep said Vinay was a 50 per cent stakeholder in the firm that was allegedly involved in financial irregularities in building a drainage system in northwest Delhi in 2015-16.
Officials said Bansal was picked up from his Pitampura home and produced in court, which sent him to one-day judicial custody. “He was questioned in the presence of his advocate after the case was registered on May 8 last year, but he gave vague answers. In the last one month, he was questioned thrice… He was asked about his role in M/s Renu Construction Company, and he claimed it was owned by his father. But officials have documents which show the father-son duo had a 50% share,” officials said.
Reacting to Bansal’s arrest, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia said the probe against Surender Bansal began much before the AAP came to power and that he was given a clean chit: “The ACB’s only task in the last three years has been to trouble the AAP… The probe against him (Surender Bansal) had begun even before AAP came to power. IIT-Roorkee and Sri Ram Labs conducted a third-party audit and gave him a clean chit. The arrest has been made to deflect attention from the CCTV controversy.”
However, ACB officials found that the “ultrasonic velocity and rebound hammer tests” carried out by Sri Ram Institute for Industrial Research to check the quality of work found it unsatisfactory. “The MoU signed between the PWD and IIT-Roorkee for the third-party audit was not there in the records,” officials said.
The FIRs were filed on a complaint by Rahul Sharma, founder of Roads Anti-Corruption Organisation (RACO) — an organisation which claims to monitor construction projects in the capital — on January 9 last year. He had alleged that M/s Renu Construction Company was awarded a contract to build a reinforced cement concrete (RCC) drain and improve side-berms from northwest Delhi’s Shani Mandir to Bakoli village. The estimated cost of the project was Rs 4.9 crore; but the firm had bid for Rs 2.64 crore in connivance with PWD officials and the project was completed at a cost of Rs 3.1 crore, the complainant alleged.
ACB officials scanned several documents procured from the PWD, and found that they had procured steel and cement from M/S Mahadev Impex firm in Sonipat. However, it was found that the firm does not exist and the address of the company was bogus, said officials. “The arrest was made after investigators found that fake bills were attached for materials that weren’t even supplied… and some of the bills were of companies that do not exist or supply those materials… (such as) Mahadev Impex Company. When Vinay was questioned about it, he refused to provide details,” ACB sources said.
Sources said the ACB had examined the materials, along with the CPWD, and sent them to a lab for a quality check. “The CPWD, in their probe, found lapses in their project and the material,” sources added. A possible involvement of PWD officers in the case will also be probed, they said.