Ludhiana, May 24
The vigilance bureau has begun the process of questioning former Chief Minister by sending a list of 56 questions by post to him for his alleged role in the city centre scam, alleged hawala transactions, foreign property and other allegations that had cropped up during the two-month long investigation.

Highly placed sources have revealed that the list of 56 questions had been sent by post as the Congress was planning to gather strong crowd of supporters at Circuit House, Patiala, on May 28, where the vigilance had earlier summoned him to appear for answering questions.

The government was little wary of the situation as it could cause law and order problem especially in the wake of the Dera Sacha Sauda controversy.

In order to avoid the problem and not to let any one drive political mileage out of the process, the vigilance decided to send a list of 56 questions.

The questions ranging from his role from the day one in the city centre project, his closeness to arrested accused Chetan Gupta, the alleged foreign property, meetings with representatives of Today Homes, involvement of his relatives and other allegations.

Sources said the former Chief Minister had been told to send his reply.

Meanwhile, in a separate development, the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted anticipatory bail to Raninder Singh and Raminder Singh, son and son-in-law, respectively, of the former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

Raninder stated in his petition that his entire family was being implicated in the case on the statement of one of the accused, Chetan Gupta, a Delhi businessman, arrested by the VB recently. The court of Justice Uma Nath Singh granted the relief sought by Raninder Singh, under Section 438, CrPC, who had submitted that the arresting authority should be allowed to release him in the event of his arrest.

The state counsel averred that the Vigilance Bureau had recovered a pen drive and computer from Chetan Gupta’s possession, which had disclosed that Rs 21 crore had been transferred to Raninder’s account on the day auction in the project was conducted. He vehemently sought the custodial interrogation of the petitioner and cited some Supreme Court judgements to buttress his point.

Earlier, the arrest of Amarinder Singh and his wife was stayed by the court till July 31. The former Chief Minister and 18 others were booked by the VB on March 24 for alleged corruption and cheating in a real estate project.