punjab

Updated: Jul 18, 2018 23:53 IST

The complainant in the Rs1,144-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam involving chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has said he was being pressured to depose in the court in the favour of the accused.

The Vigilance Bureau (VB), which registered the case in 2007, filed the closure report in a Ludhiana court last year.

On Tuesday, the complainant, former vigilance senior superintendent of police (SSP) Kanwarjit Singh Sandhu, filed an application in the court alleging that Amarinder and former CM Parkash Singh Badal have joined hands to settle corruption cases filed against each other. The application will be taken up for hearing on Wednesday in the court of district and sessions judge Gurbir Singh.

Sandhu has requested the court that he be heard before passing any order on the cancellation report submitted by the VB.

Advocate Vijay Mahendru, who moved the application in the court on behalf of Sandhu, said the former SSP, who was the investigating officer in the case, was being threatened to support the cancellation report when the court will summon him for recording his statements.

“Both Amarinder and Badal have colluded to scuttle the judicial process by diluting corruption cases involving thousands of crores of rupees. They are also misusing their power to threaten and intimidate public servants who in their due process of duty had investigated the cases against. Departments of home and prosecution are under Amarinder and there is clear-cut conflict of interest as he himself is accused in the City Centre scam,” Sandhu stated in his application.

“The process to file cancellation report in scam started when Badal was the CM. Amarinder was facing two other probes of disproportionate assets and floating of fictitious companies and conducting transactions through it. Both these cases were put in cold storage by the then Badal government. These cases were investigated by then vigilance SSP (Patiala) Shiv Kumar. The present DGP, Suresh Arora, was the vigilance director when was process of cancellation was started,” Sandhu stated in his plea.

The application further alleged that cases were registered against Badal and his family members during Amarinder’s tenure between 2002 and 2007, but when Badal again took over the state’s reigns as the CM, majority of the witnesses resiled from their statements. There is a public perception that families Badal and Amarinder have agreed to help each other to withdraw criminal cases against each other,” read the application.