Ludhiana-based chemist, 2 others form fake assn

Tribune News Service

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Ludhiana, September 16

A city-based wholesale chemist, along with two other chemists of SAS Nagar and Amritsar, floated a bogus parallel Punjab chemist association and misappropriated funds to the tune of Rs 32 lakh. A FIR in this regard was registered by the Patiala police recently.

Members of the Punjab Chemist Association (PCA) conducted a press conference in this regard here today.

The suspects have been identified as Gurbaksh Singh Chawla of Ludhiana, Surinder Duggal of Amritsar and Amardeep Singh of SAS Nagar. Surinder was made the president, Amardeep finance secretary and Gurbaksh general secretary of the association.

Addressing the media, general secretary of the PCA Manmohan Singh said the suspects had created a fake association with the motive to misappropriate funds. After creating the same, they even opened a bank account by producing a fake certificate of the Registration of Societies to the bank. In the past years, the suspects received huge funds in the account of the fake association.

He said under the Product Information Scheme (PIS), pharma companies transfer funds to the account of the PCA regularly, which the association had to use to disseminate information about their products.

“After getting funds in the account of their fake association, the trio used to transfer the same to their own personal accounts. Our organisation members had come to know about the fraud and filed a complaint with the SSP, Patiala, in May this year. After an inquiry, a case was registered on September 13 against the three suspects,” he said.

He held that the suspects had been receiving funds in the fake account for the past around five years.

There are around 27,000 members of the PCA in the state.