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Ludhiana Police on Friday booked Congress party leader and MLA Pritam Singh Kotbhai and five others for allegedly cheating Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, managing director of the Pearls Group.
Police said Bhangoo is the prime suspect in the multi-billion fund scam and Kotbhai was alleged to have demanded ₹3.5 crore to get the cases against him dismissed. Police said a search operation has been launched to nab Kathai.
Kotbhai, who won the assembly elections in 2017 from Bhucho Mandi constituency in Bathinda, has previously been booked in several money fraud cases – in Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand states – for allegedly conning people under the pretense of doubling their money.
Ludhiana Police Commissioner Mandeep Singh Sidhu said that the police filed the FIR in the case after receiving a complaint from Chinder Singh, a resident of Sector 38, Chandigarh Road, Ludhiana. Chinder Singh, in his complaint to the police, had named Kotpai and five others.
According to the police, the accused who have been booked are Jeevan Singh from Jedarbaha, Dalip Kumar Tripathi from Lucknow, Sanjay Sharma from Faridabad, Syed Parvej Rehman from Lucknow and Dharamveer from Jedarbaha. Police Commissioner Siddhu said that Jeevan, Dharamveer and Dalip have already been arrested in the case.
In his complaint, Chinder mentioned that his uncle Nirmal Singh Bhango – who had been lodged in Tihar Jail and then in Bathinda Jail – met Kutbhai, who spoke of his connections with the government. According to Chinder, Kotbhai told Bhangoo that he had several cases of chit money pending against him, but he managed to get bail in all of them.
He also promised to release Bhangoo from all his cases and also to bail him if he pays ₹5 crore. Bhangoo later agreed to pay Kotbhai ₹3.5 crore in advance.
Bhangoo then discussed the matter with Shinder, who managed to borrow ₹3.5 crore from Girdhari Lal on interest, and who also made Demand Drafts (DDs) and transferred the money to different companies as instructed by Kotbhai between July and September, 2020, the complaint said. Shinder later finds out that all the companies the money was transferred to as per Kotbhai’s instructions were fake.
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