SIT gives clean chit to senior police officer but Punjab Vigilance Bureau arrests him

The arrest of senior police officer Ashish Kapoor, posted as commandant of Indian Reserve Battalion Pathankot, being touted as an achievement by the Vigilance Bureau, has raked up a major controversy in Punjab.

Ignoring the findings of the Special Investigation Team comprising two Additional DGPs that exonerated AIG Kapoor of all charges and recommended the cancellation of the FIR in August this year, the Vigilance Bureau went ahead with registering a fresh FIR and arresting an officer who was instrumental in exposing several scams when posted as AIG in the Vigilance Bureau.

The scams exposed by Kapoor include a Rs 1000 crore Irrigation Department scam involving two Akali ministers and three IAS officers, a Rs 1000 crore GST scam involving over 25 Taxation Department officers, a Rs 600 crore Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) projects scam involving Chief Engineer Surinder Singh Pehlwan, and had also put to trial an Indian Forest Service officer Harsh Kumar in a forgery case.

Poonam Rajan, a resident of Kurukshetra doing immigration business, alleged in April 2019, when lodged in Patiala Central Jail as an undertrial in a fraud case of 2018, that Ashish Kapoor had extorted Rs 1 crore from her mother Prem Lata through four signed cheques. The names of the recipients were deliberately not written on the cheques as Kapoor wanted to get them encashed in the accounts of his acquaintances later, she had alleged.

The money paid was alleged to be in lieu of help promised by the AIG in an immigration fraud-related FIR registered in the Zirakpur police station against Poonam, her mother Prem Lata, brother Kuldip Singh Pawar and sister-in-law Preeti.

A case had been filed against Poonam Rajan by Lovleesh Garg, Meenakshi Garg, Dhruv Garg, and Hemraj who alleged that Poonam and her accomplices promised to get the Garg family settled in the US through an investment visa. It would require an investment of Rs 2 crore. Finally, the deal was settled for Rs 60 lakhs while some sort of an arrangement was made to pay the remaining money later. An amount of Rs 60 lakh was paid to Kuldip Singh Pawar via the bank’s RTGS system of payment. But the accused neither got the Garg family a visa nor returned the money.

Additional Sessions Judge Mohali, Avtar Singh, on completing the trial, convicted the accused and sentenced them to three 3-years of imprisonment. The 4th accused Preeti, was not included in the charge sheet as police found that she played no role in the cheating.

In her statement given to IG State Special Operations Cell in April 2019, Poonam alleged that in August 2016, she was lodged in Central Jail Amritsar as an undertrial in a previous immigration fraud case. Poonam claimed that she and Ashish Kapoor the Superintendent of the jail developed physical intimacy as she had strained relations with her husband and a divorce case was pending in a Gurgaon court. She also claimed that Ashish Kapoor expressed his willingness to marry her after divorcing his wife because he was also having problems in his married life.

Alleging repeated rape by Kapoor starting in 2016 to 2018, Poonam went on to say that Kapoor’s wife came to know about his extramarital relationship with her and threatened to expose the officer. Under threat from his wife, he later backtracked from his position to marry her and did not divorce his wife. It led to the straining of their relations.

IG Kunwar Vijay Partap was on a visit to Patiala jail in April 2019 to investigate allegations made by a prisoner exposing an extortion racket running in jail involving gangsters, prison, and police officers. It was here in the jail that Poonam narrated her “tale of woe” to the IG.

Intriguingly, overzealous Kunwar Vijay Partap by himself expanded the scope of his investigation and roped in Ashish Kapoor merely on the basis of a statement given by Poonam. A rape charge pertaining to the alleged happenings of 2016 in Amritsar was hoisted retrospectively on the AIG. Besides, the IG also added a corruption charge (under PCA) against Kapoor for extorting Rs 1 crore in 2018.

Kapoor moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking a transfer of investigation from Kunwar V. Partap, who allegedly acted as a “de facto complainant” against him. The AIG argued that Poonam and the two other members of her family had already been convicted by the Mohali special court, implying that the inquiry by Kunwar V. Partap held no significance.

The High Court, however, constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by Additional DGP Sharad Satya Chauhan, comprising four other members and another Additional DGP Ms. Vibha Raj, on the insistence of Poonam. After over 2-years of strenuous investigation, the SIT, on August 27 this year, absolved Kapoor of all charges and filed a report in the court of Additional Sessions Judge Mohali to cancel the FIR against the AIG.

Advocate Pardeep Virk counsel for Kapoor expressed his astonishment about the Vigilance Bureau’s hurried decision to register a fresh FIR with regard to the same allegations under PCA that stood trashed by the SIT in August this year.

“An officer of the rank of an SP – far junior to the ADGP rank officers comprising SIT – submits a report to the Chief Director Vigilance Bureau, who recklessly orders the arrest of the AIG,” he said.

Advocate Virk wants to know whether the VB has found the money trail of Rs 1 crore allegedly encashed by acquaintances of Kapoor. The money moved from the bank account of Prem Lata to 4 different bank accounts of the beneficiaries allegedly associated with the AIG. “Let the beneficiaries be traced from bank records to answer whether Kapoor had anything to do with the money they received from Prem Lata. Then only the corruption charge would stand against his client,” says Virk.