Raje booked for land fraud
Jupinderjit Singh
Tribune News Service

Jaipur, January 13
Vasundhra Raje, after holding the coveted office of the Chief Minister, has become the first leader of the state who has been booked for cheating and fraud and criminal conspiracy in a land transfer case.

The Gandhi Nagar police station late last night lodged an FIR under Sections 420, 409 and 120-B against Raje, former mayor of Jaipur Ashok Pranami, former home minister Gulab Chand Kataria, former urban development minister Pratap Singh Singhvi, senior elader Lalit Kishore Chaturvedi and four others.

A local court had ordered the registration of an FIR last week. Shockingly, the case involves a trust named after Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, known for his honesty, integrity and also for being the guide and philosopher of the BJP.

The police has handed over the investigation to the CID-Crime Branch. The criminal investigation department was empowered to carry out a probe into the case where many sitting and former MLAs were the accused in the land transfer scam.

The police has also initiated action against DSP Jahangir Khan, who when posted as SHO, Gandhi Nagar police station, had lodged just a daily dairy report (DDR) in the case even though the court had asked the police to register a case.

Jahangir Khan took the controversial decision when the BJP was in power. He was subsequently promoted.

The FIR states that the trust got the land in C-scheme at a throwaway price. The trust was allotted about 6432.75 square metres of land at the paltry rate of Rs 562.5 per metre. The market rate was about Rs 100,000 per sq metre.

The land scam first hit the headlines in 2006 when allegations surfaced that the trust got prime land at a throwaway price. Prakash Kukkar, local Congress man, was the first to make the allegations.

He alleged that the land was sought on behalf of the trust in March 2006 but the trust came into existence after one month on April 14, 2006.

Though the trust decided to return the land to the government, the matter did not end. An advocate of the legal cell of the Congress, Sushil Kumar Sharma, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in a local court seeking action.

The trust land scandal was a major poll issue also. The state Congress leaders had even in 2006 approached the then Governor Pratibha Patil, seeking permission to prosecute Raje and her Cabinet colleagues in the land scam involving several crores.