The FIR had been filed under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 384 (extortion) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code. (Representational) Inspector Naveen Saharan, former Sector 14 SHO, and Head Constable Harpal, his driver of the Panchkula police, were among the accused arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on January 7.
The accused were arrested under several charges, including charges of extortion, criminal conspiracy as well as cheating in an FIR filed on December 8.
Accused Kushwinder Sharma and Ashish were arrested soon after the complaint had been filed in December.
At the time of filing the FIR, no police official had been made an accused in the case. ACP Vijay Kumar, heading the SIT, said, “It was after we collected sufficient evidence regarding the allegations against the police officers that we arrested them.”
The accused police officials were arrested on Thursday by the police department and were taken on police remand for four days. The information of their arrest was only made public on Saturday. When asked about information gathered from questioning Inspector Naveen, ACP Kumar said, “We cannot disclose such sensitive information. We will come to the media when the time is right.”
The FIR filed in December 2020 had been filed following a nudge from the office of Home Minister Anil Vij on a complaint sent by Kunal Chopra, resident of Karnal.
Chopra, as per the FIR, had wanted to invest in a house here in Panchkula and had approached his acquaintance Sajeev, resident of Delhi, regarding the same. “Sanjeev had gotten me in touch with Kushwinder Sharma, resident of Panchkula,” who claimed to have knowledge about a flat owned by an NRI which he would sell at half the cost to Chopra.
Accused Sanjeev has also been arrested in the case. He was remanded in three-day police custody by the district court.
Kushwinder had promised him the flat at half the cost if Chopra paid Rs 50 lakh to the caretaker of the flat upfront. “Thus I reached Panchkula on November 26 with Rs 55.5 lakh in cash and lodged myself at the Hotel Shiraj. After half an hour, Kushwinder reached my room with two constables and five unknown persons, took the bag and started to leave saying gambling is not permitted here and if they saw me again, they would put me in jail,” Chopra said in the FIR.
As he followed the accused out of the hotel, he saw them get in a Bolero which was marked as ‘SHO Sector 14’. He then reached the Sector 14 police station only to find it empty. He went to the police station again in the evening and saw the same Bolero standing outside.
Levelling serious allegations against the SHO of Sector 14 police station, Naveen Saharan, Chopra in the FIR had further stated, “When I met the SHO there, he told me there had been no police raid. He consoled me and told me to wait the night for my money and assured everything will be fine the following morning. When I revisited the police station in the morning, I was threatened and told to go away else he would make me regret it.”
The FIR had named Sanjeev and Kushwinder as accused while also pointing towards other unknown accused.
The FIR had been filed under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 384 (extortion) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.