Apex court refuses to cancel bail of Amarinder’s son

By IANS

New Delhi : The Supreme Court Monday refused to cancel the bail granted to former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s son Raminder Singh, who is facing prosecution for his alleged role in a land scam in Ludhiana.


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A bench of Justice A.K. Mathur and Justice Markandey Katju refused to accede to the Punjab government’s plea to cancel Raminder Singh’s bail on the ground that he was not cooperating with the investigative agency.

Raminder Singh was earlier granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The apex court bench said if Raminder Singh was not cooperating with the police in the probe of the case, the state government was free to approach the high court to seek the cancellation of his bail.

Raminder Singh is an accused in the what has come to be known as the Ludhiana City Centre scam, involving loss to the state exchequer worth several billion rupees following irregularities in allotment of prime plots of land to a few builders by the erstwhile Amarinder Singh government.

Amarinder Singh himself had ordered the probe into the matter before the 2006 assembly elections in the state in which his Congress party was defeated by the Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance.

He too now faces the probe into the case along with his several relatives, including son Raminder Singh.

Appearing for the state government, Ravi Shankar Prasad contended that the high court had passed a blanket order of bail to Raminder Singh. He pointed out the high court should have given bail to Raminder Singh only in some particular case or against a particular first information report (FIR) lodged, and not in all cases already registered or are likely to be registered in future as offshoots of the scam.

Acceding to this plea, the apex court asked the high court to amend its bail order.

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