Vigilance Bureau arrests private person extorting Rs 5 lakh from govt official*

Chandigargh January 31 : The Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Tuesday arrested a private person Lal Chand Bansal, resident of Gugga Madi colony, Kharar, SAS Nagar district for extorting money from Municipal Engineer, Patiala, Baldev Raj Verma by threatening to lodge complaint to the Bureau.

Disclosing this here today, a spokesperson of the state VB said the above mentioned officer has submitted a complaint to the Bureau and alleged that the above said private person was blackmailing him by threatening to file complaint against him to the Bureau. He informed that the alleged blackmailer was demanding Rs 2 crore in lieu of withdrawing the plaint and asking to pay Rs 50 lakh cash and give property worth Rs 1.50 crore. The complainant officer has recorded the entire conversation in this regard as he didn’t want to pay the extortion money but promised falsely to pay him token money of Rs 5 lakh.

The complainant has further alleged that earlier to this the accused Lal Chand Bansal had lodged two complaints in the years 2015 and 2017 against him but the VB had filed both of them after an enquiry.

The spokesperson further added that after preliminary investigation of this complaint, a VB team from its flying squad laid a trap and the accused Lal Chand was arrested near TDI colony, Kharar while accepting tainted money amounting to Rs 5 lakh in the presence of two official witnesses. In this regard, a case under sections 419, 420, 384 of IPC at VB police station, flying squad-1, Punjab at SAS Nagar has been registered. Further investigation in this case was under progress.

He further added that that after the arrest of above accused, the VB team searched his house and recovered about 70 files, various documents and a cash counting machine besides a laptop which contains soft files regarding complaints lodged against different government officials. He was also booked earlier by the police in two different deception cases.

During preliminary investigation, it has came to light that the above said accused used to file RTI queries and lodge complaints against public servants and later withdrew such applications/plaints by submitting declaration that he didn’t want to pursue the enquiry/complaint against the concerned officials. Earlier to this, the accused has submitted a declaration in the Municipal Council, Kharar that he didn’t want any information under RTI against the complainant Baldev Raj Verma.