Improvement Trust ex-EO, clerks booked for filing wrong registries

On a complaint lodged by the Chairman of the Jalandhar Improvement Trust (JIT), Jagtar Sanghera, the Jalandhar City police have booked its former executive officer (EO), certain officials and clerks in two cases related to wrong registries done by the office about seven-eight years back.

While one of the properties in question is plot number 460 in Guru Amardass Nagar, the other one is house number 462 in the posh New Jawahar Nagar. In the matter related to the first property, Rajesh Chaudhary, who has been EO of JIT and is now posted in the Improvement Trust in Patiala, some officials of the JIT and a person named Amandeep S Matharoo had been booked recently in the case under Sections 406, 408, 420, 465, 466, 468, 441 and 120-B of the IPC.

Sanghera has alleged that the plot had been alloted to Jaspal Singh in 1986, but since he could not deposit the instalments, the trust had cancelled the allotment via a resolution passed in 2003 and recovered its possession. He said the matter came to his knowledge after he came across summons regarding it in an ongoing litigation in the court of Civil Judge, Junior Division, in Jalandhar.

He said he checked the records and found that the property had been allotted to Matharoo in 2018 by Chaudhary, who was the then EO of the JIT. He said no other documents related to this registry were attached in the file. He alleged that the JIT had faced a huge monetary loss because of this allotment as it was a trust property.

The second FIR that the JIT has got lodged pertains to the palatial house in New Jawahar Nagar in which Rajwant Kaur has been made accused along with two clerks Mukhtiar Singh and Pawan Kumar. Sanghera has alleged that the property belonged to three brothers Gurmeet Singh, Amrik Singh and Jagmohan Singh (now deceased) since 1982. The JIT Chairman has said the matter pertaining to the fraud in this case also came to his knowledge when he received summons from the court.

On perusal of the records, he found that former JIT Chairman Baljit S Neelamahal (now deceased) and clerk Mukhtiar Singh had got the property registered in the name of Jagmohan’s wife Rajwant Kaur in May 2011, even as they were reportedly owner of just one-third of the property and had no legal right to claim the entire property. He said this file too was found incomplete as several documents in it were found missing.

Sanghera further said clerk Mukhtiar Singh had retired since then and now clerk Pawan Kumar was handling the case, but he too could not give any convincing reply on the incomplete file, missing documents and its alleged tampering. He said after doing an internal inquiry, he had got the FIR lodged against those involved in both cases.

The Navi Baradari police teams have lodged the case and started inquiry into the alleged fraud cases.