Chandigarh, May 29
The Punjab government will move a special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court tomorrow to seek the cancellation of the bail granted to Raninder Singh Tikku, son of former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, and Raminder Singh, alias Richie, by the Punjab and Haryana High Court last week in the Ludhiana city centre scam.

Also, based on the video clips of yesterday’s six-hour questioning of Amarinder Singh in Patiala, the advocate-general’s office of the Punjab government is examining the possibility of a petition to get the stay against the arrest of the former Chief Minister vacated.

Sources reveal that since the entire questioning of Amarinder Singh was video-graphed, some clips where he refused to answer questions from the investigators were being closely examined as “refusal to answer a question during investigation legally amounts to non-cooperation and can be a major ground for the cancellation of the stay of arrest.”

Two questions which the former Chief Minister reportedly refused to answer yesterday related to his financial dealings with Chetan Gupta, the alleged conduit between some top politicians and businessmen for handling their black money and hawala operators overseas, and the money spent on guests from Pakistan, including journalist Aroosa Alam of Islamabad.

The AG’s office, the sources reveal, was also scrutinising media reports in which the former Chief Minister has been accused of hurling threats at the investigating officers which are considered a serious violation of the normal conditions in the case of stay of arrest. In case the plea moved by the AG’s office for the vacation of the stay of arrest is accepted, Amarinder Singh may have problems in getting bail subsequently because of the evidence being gathered by the vigilance bureau.

Similarly, in the case of treating visitors from Pakistan as state guests, he did not answer when asked how state guests of Punjab could be treated with state finances .

A statement made under section 164 before a judicial magistrate by executive engineer Awasthi of the Ludhiana improvement trust may be the plank for Delhi-based additional advocate-general K.K. Khurana to move the SLP before the vacation bench of the Supreme Court tomorrow.

Awasthi, according to the statement, had maintained that four bids which had been received till May 10 were taken to Ludhiana’s Park Plaza and were tampered with in the presence of Raninder Singh Tikku and Raminder Singh before Today Homes filed their bid. Again, at the time of the opening of the bids, both Awasthi and architect Sunil Kumar Day were present. It was supervised by Day and Awasthi claimed that he was a witness to the payment of bribes to local bodies minister Jagjit Singh, Ludhiana improvement trust chairman P.S. Sibia and others.

Investigators claim to have collected corroborating evidence that a bribe of Rs 21.62 crore was deposited with Chetan Gupta allegedly by Raninder Singh Tikku in the year 2005. In the SLP, the Punjab government may quote case law to seek the custodial interrogation of both Raninder Singh and Raminder Singh.

Chetan Gupta’s pen drive, sources in the Punjab AG’s office maintain, is admissible as evidence under the IT Act as every file created on any computer and against the old version of DOS cannot be tampered with. The history of every file created on a computer or stored in a pen drive also cannot be altered or tampered with.As such, the statement of accounts of the past eight years is supported by the history icon of the DOS programme.

An analysis of the computerised accounts revealed that Chetan was handling money on behalf of 140 persons of which six were receiving loans from him. Other money was being siphoned off through hawala channels.