Chandigarh: After nearly 19 months, the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) looks set to file the final chargesheet in the corruption case involving former CBI Judge Sudhir Parmar, his relatives, and colonisers.
Confirming the development, officials said that the agency has now applied to the authorities concerned in the Punjab and Haryana high court to seek permission to file the chargesheet. “Once we get the permission, the chargesheet will be filed in the court concerned,” a senior ACB official said on Saturday.
The official said that all the accused mentioned in the chargesheet have joined the investigations over time. “Since they were already arrested by the ED in a similar and related case, there is no need for their custody. We shall directly file the chargesheet,” the official said.
Notably, former special CBI Judge of Panchkula, Sudhir Parmar, along with others, was booked in a corruption case registered by the ACB at Panchkula in April 2023. He is among the three persons named in the FIR registered under sections 7, 8, and 11 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The other two accused named in the FIR are Parmar’s nephew, Ajay Parmar, and Roop Bansal, an owner of M3M company.
The case was registered on the complaint of ACB’s additional superintendent of police (Addl SP) Kushal Pal Singh, who sourced the content based on information from various sources. Parmar was accused of receiving a bribe through his nephew for showing favouritism to Roop Bansal and Basant Bansal, who own the realty company called M3M, as well as Lalit Goyal (now in custody) of realty giant IREO, for the cases pending in the CBI/PMLA court of Panchkula.
While the ACB was investigating the case, the directorate of enforcement (ED) also registered an enforcement case information report (ECIR) linked to this case in June 2023. During the probe, the ED first arrested two directors of the M3M group, Pankaj Bansal and Basant Bansal, followed by the arrest of other accused, including Sudhir Parmar and his nephew Ajay Singh Parmar. Later, the ED filed the chargesheet against all the accused, and the concerned special court for PMLA cases started the trial.
In a recent development, citing the ongoing investigations by the ACB, two directors of the ACB moved before the Special Judge to halt the trial, as the ACB had yet to finalise its investigations.