Punjab Vigilance Bureau says recruitment scam gang duped 50 job aspirants of lakhs

After busting a major recruitment scam with the arrest of four men, two each on Wednesday and Thursday, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Friday said that the kingpin of the scam, Sukhwant Singh, was “involved” in another cheating case registered at Budhlada police station in Mansa district in which 30 job aspirants were duped of Rs 75 lakh on the pretext of jobs in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and Railways.

A Vigilance Bureau spokesperson said that one of the accused has “disclosed having duped seven innocent job seekers on pretext of providing them government jobs. As of now, the whole gang has duped 50 innocent job seekers on pretext of providing government jobs to them and it is expected that that this gang will make more such disclosures in coming days”.

VB has now learnt that a case at Budhlada police station was registered on November 21 last year on the basis of a complaint by Budhlada resident Maanpreet Singh against Tarsem Lal, a resident of Changali village in Ferozepur district, Balwinder Singh, a resident of Namdev Chowk, Ferozepur and Ajitpartap Singh, a resident of New Rachna Nagar, Gwalior, an official spokesperson of VB said, adding: “Sukhwant Singh was totally involved in this case, but when the job aspirants raised hue and cry, Sukhwant Singh fraudulently got an FIR filed against his fellow co-accused, Tarsem Lal and others, by posing as witness, whereas, actually Sukhwant Singh was very much part and parcel of this gang.”

On Thursday, VB announced that the recruitment scam was busted with the arrest of four men — Pirthipal Singh, a multipurpose healthcare worker posted at a Primary Health Center (PHC) in Dhotian (Tarn Taran district), his aide Malkiat Singh of Varpal village (Amritsar), kingpin Sukhwant Singh (from Ludhiana), and Harpal Singh, who is also the sarpanch of Kad Gill village (Tarn Taran district). At least Rs 50,000 of bribe money was recovered from the suspects during the operation.

All the four accused were remanded to three days in police custody on Friday.

According to the Vigilance Bureau, “The accused have confessed that they had demanded from the complainant Barinderpal Singh, a resident of Mohalla Jaswant Singh Nagar (Tarn Taran) a total of Rs 3.5 lakh for recruitment of his relative as a helper in PSPCL. Out of this amount, Sukhwant Singh would have received Rs 3 lakh, whereas Prithipal and Malkiat would have received Rs 25,000 each.”

The Bureau added, “Malkiat revealed that in year 2019, he had got four persons recruited in BSF by getting their written test & medical examination cleared through Dominic Sahota, who introduced himself as Assistant Commandant of BSF, and they had taken Rs 2.8 lakh from each aspirant, and Dominic Sahota kept Rs 2.5 lakh per head with him and gave Rs 30,000 per head to Malkiat”.

Sahota is currently lodged in Ropar jail in connection with a case of kidnapping for ransom and Arms Act registered at Phase I police station in Mohali in January this year.

As per VB, Sahota is “kingpin of gang of kidnappers and robbers” and “posed as officer of National Investigation Agency, BSF & other elite security agencies”.

Two more FIRs of cheating were registered against Sahota and others were registered in 2016 and December last year at police stations NRI Amritsar and Fatehgarh Churian, respectively.

The spokesperson said Sahota would be brought on production warrant by the VB in the instant case from Ropar jail.

“Dominic Sahota has distributed fake identity cards of his firm namely ‘Special Defence Personnel Forum’ to his sub-agents such as Malkiat Singh and fake identity card has been recovered from Malkiat Singh,” said the spokesperson, adding that the scrutiny of mobile phones of the accused revealed that they all “drafted numerous advertisements with regard to various jobs on their ‘WhatsApp’ to lure innocent job aspirants in their trap”.