AIT scam: Captain to appear in Mohali court, verdict likely today

Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh will appear before a vigilance court that is likely to pronounce its verdict on a cancellation report that the vigilance has filed giving a clean chit to all 15 accused in the 2008 Amritsar Improvement Trust (AIT) scam in Mohali, on Friday.

Amarinder is one of the 18 accused in the case. Three of the accused are dead. In August 2017, the court had rejected the cancellation report for the second time and had directed the vigilance to reinvestigate the matter.

In September 2008, the vigilance had registered a first information report (FIR) under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc) and 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

The accused were also booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act. A challan was filed in February 2009, stating that 18 people were involved in the alleged scam that had caused a loss of Rs 360 crore to the state exchequer. However, charges were never framed against the accused.

In its second round of investigation, conducted following an order of the high court, the bureau had found that there was ‘no undue favour granted to any developer or misuse of power’ and sought cancellation of the FIR against all accused.