The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested Bhupinder Singh alias Honey, the nephew of Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, in an alleged illegal sand mining case. He was due to be taken to a court in Jalandhar to seek custody of him.

The arrests came days before the Punjab parliament voted.

The ED raided the premises of Bhupinder Singh, his business partner and six miners of Mohali, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar and Pathankot on January 18. The agency said it seized Rs 100 crore and valuables from Bhupinder Singh and his partner Sandeep Kumar during the raid that lasted until January 19.

The ED said Bhupinder Singh, Kumar and Kudrat Deep Singh set up a company called Provider Overseas Consultancy Limited in 2018, each holding a 33.33% stake. According to the audit report available on the website of the Union Corporate Affairs Department, the company recorded a turnover of Rs 1.877 lakh in 2019-20.

The Punjab Police first brought an alleged illegal sand mining case on the matter in 2018. In the case’s first information report (FIR), they named 26 defendants, most of them truck drivers. It was registered in a complaint by the Punjab Mining Department, which found the sand quarry was operating without approval during a raid in 2018. Bhupinder Singh was not mentioned in the FIR, while Kudrat Deep Singh was acquitted following a police investigation.
After the ED took over the investigation, it filed another case at its district office in Jalandhar last November.

Chaney last month accused the center of abusing the central agency to intimidate him ahead of the election. He added that it tried the same with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal but failed.

Complete News Source : Hindustan Times