PCS officer’s direct role in accepting bribe crops up

Deepkamal Kaur

Jalandhar, November 28

It is for the first time since the opening of inquiry into the seven-year-old alleged corruption case against PCS officer Anand Sagar Sharma that the Vigilance Bureau has indicated his direct role in accepting bribe in the Hoshiarpur land scam case.

Bail plea of five suspects dismissed

The details of the same came in orders of the bail application, which was jointly moved by five accused (of the 42 recently accused persons in the VB inquiry) in the court of Dr Raj Atri, Additional Sessions Judge, Ludhiana. The bail application of all five suspects – Lovejot S Johal, Arun Gupta, Tilak Raj Gupta, Gurbax Kaur and Ajay Kumar – was dismissed by the court on Tuesday.

Sharma was the SDM-cum-Land Acquisition Collector in the four-laning project of the NH-70 from Jalandhar to Chintpurni. He was to oversee the acquisition of 103 acres of land in Hoshiarpur district. Fresh evidences have come to fore that an accused in the case transferred Rs 7 lakh bribery amount each in the accounts of Sharma’s father and father-in-law.

The details of the same came in today’s orders of the bail application, which was jointly moved by five accused (of the 42 recently accused persons in the VB inquiry) in the court of Dr Raj Atri, Additional Sessions Judge, Ludhiana.

The bail application of all five suspects – Lovejot S Johal, Arun Gupta, Tilak Raj Gupta, Gurbax Kaur and Ajay Kumar – was dismissed by the court today.

The bail order cites the details from the report of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was constituted in April 2022. It reads: “A draft-3A schedule was prepared and was sent to the XEN, PWD, Hoshiarpur, who was the project director. The same was also sent to Sharma for verification of ‘khasras’. However, the PCS officer kept the draft pending for four months and fraudulently changed ‘khasra’ numbers of the land pertaining to five villages. Thereafter, he involved his near and dear ones who purchased land in these villages in their names as well as the names of their relatives.”

The order further reads, “Applicant Ajay Kumar, who hails from Panchkula, along with his accomplices, purchased land at Khwaspur village in the name of co-accused Anju Aggarwal, who received compensation amount at residential rates in her bank account. Thereafter, Ajay Kumar got transferred the total amount of Rs 1.16 crore from her bank account to his company’s bank account. Ajay Kumar also gave a bribe of Rs 7 lakh to Prem Sagar Sharma, already listed as an accused in the new VB list and is the father of Anand Sagar Sharma. He also gave a bribe of Rs 7 lakh to accused Sunil Gupta, who is the father-in-law of Anand Sagar Sharma.”