Former minister Choudhary Lal Singh’s tryst with controversies

Arjun Sharma

Jammu, November 7

Former minister Choudhary Lal Singh, who is in the Enforcement Directorate’s net due to the alleged irregularities in the education trust run by his wife, is not new to controversies. The former legislator, who had remained in the Congress before switching over to the BJP in 2014, formed his own outfit — Dogra Swabhiman Sangthan Party — in 2019 after being in the eye of the storm when he termed rape accused “innocent” and demanded a CBI probe into the infamous Rassana rape case in Kathua in 2018 in which a minor girl was raped and murdered.

Had to resign as minister

In 2018, Choudhary Lal Singh alleged the police were framing ‘innocents’ in connection with the Kathua rape-murder case. After that, he had to quit his ministerial post and later he also quit the BJP.

He had taken part in a rally organised by the Hindu Ekta Manch demanding CBI probe. He had alleged that the police were framing “innocent” local youth. Singh was the forest minister in the erstwhile J&K government at the time of the incident. He resigned soon after the controversy and later quit the BJP.

His wife Kanta Andotra is now being investigated by the CBI and the ED for alleged criminal connivance in the issuance of land to an education trust between January 4 and 7 in 2011. Lal Singh appeared before the ED in Jammu on Monday which created furore among his supporters who protested outside the agency’s office in Narwal area. Last week, the ED conducted searches in Jammu and its vicinity as part of a money laundering investigation related to Andotra’s education trust and a former government official involved in alleged irregularities in land purchase for the trust.

Interestingly in 2015 when Lal Singh was the health minister of J&K, he was caught on camera touching a woman doctor inappropriately at a hospital in Lakhanpur, Kathua. The photo of the incident had gone viral which created a controversy. Before this incident, another woman doctor had lodged a complaint against Singh alleging mental harassment.