In the last round, four witnesses will appear in the special court in Mohali on April 20, after which the much-hyped case is expected to see a quiet burial
With almost 137 witnesses turning hostile, the corruption case against CM Parkash Singh Badal, his wife Surinder Kaur and son deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal is likely to fall flat.
In the last round, four witnesses will appear in the special court in Mohali on April 20, after which the much-hyped case is expected to see a quiet burial
The case was registered by the Vigilance Bureau (VB) during Congress chief minister Amarinder Singh’s term in 2003. During the initial investigations the Badals were reported to have amassed properties worth Rs2,300 crore, disproportionate to their sources of income. However, in the challan it was bought down to Rs73.69 crore.
The case started wilting after Badal took over as chief minister in 2007.
Making a turn-around in his stance that he had taken during the Congress rule investigating officer (IO) Surinder Pal Singh told the court that he had filed the challan at the bidding of his senior officer BK Uppal, the then DIG (VB). Uppal, while deposing in the court, said that the entire case was prepared by the IO and that he just had a supervisory role.
Earlier, eight eight engineers (six of them have retired) said in the court that the investigating officer and the then DIG (Vigilance) BK Uppal got their signatures under duress. They said the evaluation of the Badal’s properties was conducted by a privately-engaged agency and the government engineers were asked to sign on the dotted lines without seeing the contents of the reports.
The VB officials who worked so assiduously for 5 years in the case say there was nothing they could do if the witnesses decided to back out of their commitments.
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