Transport scam: Anticipatory bail denied to 2 contractors in Punjab

LUDHIANA: A local court on Saturday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of two contractors in the alleged foodgrain transportation scam in which former Punjab minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu is one of the accused.
Dismissing the bail plea of Jagroop Singh and Sandeep Bhatia, the court observed that: "It is not a simple case of some mistake in mentioning the vehicle numbers. The investigation suggests that the same as part of the big scam whereby the food-grain is said to have not been transported and the payments were made in connivance of the officials without proper verification of the detail and the manipulation in the allotment of the tenders also".
On 16 August, vigilance bureau (VB) Ludhiana after "verification" of a complaint by Gurprit Singh had registered a case against contractors Telu Ram, Jagroop Singh and Sandeep Bhatia besides owner/partners of Gurdas Ram and Company has been booked. Later it had arrested former minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu in the case.
The counsel for applicant Sandeep Bhatia argued that the applicant had neither committed any fraud nor forged any document or bribed any official. Jagroop's lawyer made similar arguments. After the FIR (first-information report), the applicant approached the department concerned, accusing it of laying false and frivolous allegations. He claimed to have the gate pass details and list of vehicle numbers that the department had sent to the vigilance bureau. Allegedly, the list had typographical errors and wrong vehicle numbers, which didn't match with the gate pass list and actual number of the applicant's trucks.
The bureau's FIR is allegedly based on examination of those typos without comparing with the original documents. Additional public prosecutor for the state argued that the applicants had secured the contracts by bribing the officials. The "truck numbers" they provided turned out to be of scooters, motorcycles, and cars.
The applicants are accused of causing a big loss to the exchequer, although the inquiry is in the initial stage and the bureau wants custodial interrogation of the applicants to extract more details. The court held that: "It is the case of the applicants that the tenders were allotted to them based on eligibility and there were typographical errors in Jagroop's list of the registration numbers of the trucks, while Bhatia's list was all correct. However, the prosecution's case is that for mentioning wrong numbers, the applicants' bids were liable to be rejected, but rather they were allotted the contracts." The court observed: "The charges are serious, while nothing is on file to infer any reason for false implication. Custodial interrogation shall be required for proper investigation."