Rice millers get two-year jail for paddy embezzlement

Moga, January 5

Sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate Pankaj Verma today sentenced two rice millers to two years of imprisonment for embezzling paddy worth Rs 1.7 crore.

It was allocated to them by Markfed, a state-owned procurement agency. The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 each on the rice millers.

The district police had registered a case under Section 406 of the IPC at the Badhni Kalan police station in 2014 against Arun Jain and Jagdev Singh, owners of Dhaliwal Agro Rice Mills situated near Rama village in Nihalsinghwala subdivision of the district.

Then district manager of Markfed Nishan Singh, in a complaint to the police, had alleged that 4,011 quintals of paddy worth Rs 78.94 lakh from the stock of 2012-13 paddy season had gone missing from the rice mill.

Markfed had allotted 57,361.15 quintals of paddy for milling to the Dhaliwal Agro Rice Mills in 2012-13. However, when senior officials of Markfed inspected the stock on June 30, 2014, they found that 9,588.25 quintals were missing. — TNS