Rice millers ‘try’ to enter sealed premises, booked

Our Correspondent

Ferozepur, December 19

The Ferozepur Police have registered a case against the rice mill owners for allegedly disrupting the police officials from performing their duty on the rice mill premises at Guruharsahai subdivision.

The police had sealed this rice mill last month following a complaint by the Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation (Punsup).

The accused identified as Rinku Bhatia, a resident of Sri Muktsar Sahib, and his partner Gurwinder Singh forcibly tried to enter the rice mill on Tuesday.

However, when the police officials and the PUNSUP employees, who were performing their duty, tried to stop them, the erring mill owners started arguing with the officials.

Later, on the basis of the complaint filed by Deepak Sarvan, District Manager, PUNSUP, a case under Sections 353, 186 and 506 of the IPC was registered against the accused at the Guruharsahai police station.

When contacted, the accused mill owners denied the charges and claimed that the case was politically motivated to settle scores with them.

Earlier during the special inspection drive, the Ferozepur DM had detected abnormal purchase at Jiwan Arain village and Panje ke Uthar grain markets by local commission agents few days ago.

Later, following an inquiry, it came to fore that a few local firms had allegedly made bogus purchases of 86,939 bags of paddy in connivance with another rice mill in Jiwan Arain against which payments to the tune of Rs 5.6 crore had been taken.

It was also revealed that the erring rice millers were planning to buy paddy from other states like UP and Bihar where the same is much cheaper than the MSP in Punjab and then deliver the same during milling.