Election Commission shunts out Khanna police chief Dhruv Dahiya

The Election Commission on Wednesday shunted out Khanna senior superintendent of police Dhruv Dahiya whose role is under scanner in the case of missing Rs 6.65 crore after a raid at Jalandhar priest’s house.

The move comes a day after two Punjab Police assistant sub-inspectors, who were absconding for the past one month with the said amount, were arrested by Kerala Police from a Kochi hotel.

PPS officer Gursharandeep Singh Grewal, posted as AIG in the intelligence wing, has replaced Dahiya — a 2012-batch IPS officer.

Punjab chief electoral officer S Karuna Raju had sought a detailed report from state police chief Dinkar Gupta in the case that has resulted in a major embarrassment for the police department and raised serious doubts over its conduct, especially when the poll code is in force in the wake of the Lok Sabha polls.

The DGP had forwarded a report to the EC along with findings of IG Praveen Sinha-led Special Investigation Team (SIT) that probed the case.

Dahiya’s role is under gaze as he was monitoring the police operation in which Khanna Police claimed to have recovered Rs 9.96 crore ‘hawala’ money from Jalandhar-based priest Father Anthony during a special ‘naka’ at Doraha on March 29.

However, the very next day, the priest held a press conference and claimed that Khanna Police had raided his house in Partapura in Jalandhar and recovered Rs 16.65 crore. The priest accused cops of siphoning off Rs 6.65 crores following which DGP Gupta constituted the SIT to probe these charges.

The SIT found out that Khanna police had not only made “glaring procedural lapses” while conducting the raid but also “lied” about the place of recovery. The SIT report said the two ASIs — Joginder Singh and Rajpreet Singh, who were part of the raiding squad — had left the priest’s house soon after other team members took away the seized cash in sealed boxes. Later, the duo and the informer, Surinder Singh, went missing when Sinha-led SIT started investigating their role. After the informer was arrested, the ASIs were booked too.

The Punjab CEO said the SSP’s transfer was just an administrative order.

First Published: May 02, 2019 02:41 IST