The revelations that came after the CBI raid on the house of a DIG of Punjab Police surprised everyone. CBI arrested Ropar Range DIG Harcharan Singh Bhullar red handed in a bribery case.
During the search at his house, Rs 7.5 crore in cash, about 2.5 kg of gold jewellery, 26 luxury watches branded like Rolex and Rado, four weapons, 17 cartridges, 108 foreign liquor bottles, keys of Mercedes and Audi cars, documents of bank accounts and documents of 50 benami properties were found.
CBI This action was taken when DIG Harcharan Singh Bhullar was taking a bribe of Rs 8 lakh from a scrap dealer in his office in Mohali. The businessman had told in the complaint that the DIG was promising to solve an old case registered against him by taking lakhs of rupees every month in the name of service-water.
Akash Batta, a scrap trader from Mandi Gobindgarh in Fatehgarh Sahib district, told the CBI that money was demanded through a middleman to quash the FIR registered against him in November 2023.
CBI laid a trap to check the veracity of the complaint. During the investigation, a WhatsApp call was confirmed between the DIG and his middleman, in which the bribe amount was being decided.
After 10 days of surveillance, CBI laid a trap on Thursday and when the businessman handed over the first installment of Rs 5 lakh out of the bribe of Rs 8 lakh, the DIG was arrested red-handed. The CBI produced him in the special court of Chandigarh on Friday, from where he was sent to judicial custody. His CBI remand was not demanded.
DIG’s lawyer HS Dhanoa said that CBI had nothing left to ask, hence they did not ask for remand. However, despite this argument, the scale of the seizures is so large that questions have been raised on the entire police system.
According to the initial report of CBI, documents of around 50 immovable properties have been found in the name of Bhullar’s house and his relatives. Many of these properties are in Chandigarh, Mohali, Patiala and Ludhiana. CBI has also recovered Rs 21 lakh in cash from the house of a middleman close to DIG Bhullar.
The investigating agency says that this is just the beginning. The network of DIG and the trail of his illegal properties extends to different states of the country. Harcharan Singh Bhullar is a 2009 batch IPS officer. He was promoted to the post of DIG only in January 2023.
before they Punjab Has been SSP in many districts. During the search, CBI also found that the accused DIG had keys of many lockers, which would now be opened. The investigating agency has so far frozen 15 bank accounts and further investigation is underway.
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