The preliminary enquiry accuses the trust of being in possession of huge tracts of land in gross violation of the ceiling prescribed under the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976. (File Photo)

The CBI has filed a preliminary enquiry to look into allegations of land grabbing and corruption by an educational trust being run by former J&K minister Choudhary Lal Singh.

Singh had quit the BJP along with party leader Chander Prakash Ganga after the two were made to resign from the then PDP-BJP coalition cabinet in the wake of a controversy over their public support to the demand for a CBI probe by relatives of the accused, who were arrested by the police on charges of gang rape and murder of an eight-year-Bakarwal girl in the forests of Kathua district in 2018.

Singh did not respond to multiple attempts by The Indian Express to reach him for comment.

The preliminary enquiry accuses the trust of being in possession of huge tracts of land in gross violation of the ceiling prescribed under the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976.

It has further been alleged that false certificates were issued — to claim that the land is under the exempted category under the Act — to enable the RB Educational Trust in Kathua to purchase agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, according to sources.

In a public interest litigation in the High Court in 2015, S K Bhalla, a retired professor, had sought directions to the state government to retrieve land which was in excess to the ceiling prescribed under Section 2(1) read with Section 14 of J&K Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976.