‘Uttar Pradesh police had found irrefutable proof nailing the former RS member in a Rs 25,000 crore scam’.
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh police officers who were investigating the Rs 25,000 crore scam involving former All Indian Trinamool Congress (AITMC) Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Kanwar Deep Singh or K.D. Singh, before it was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in April this year, had found irrefutable proof nailing the former Rajya Sabha member in the scam.
Official sources said that a major sum of the money collected by Singh from gullible investors was used to fund election campaigns of political leaders in the April-May 2011 West Bengal polls.
The UP police had started investigating the scam in September 2019 when residents of Kanpur had filed an FIR at the Kotwali police station against Singh and six of his associates alleging that he had taken money from them by promising them residential plots and buildings and a return of 18% on their investment. Later, the investigation, considering the scale of the financial corruption that had taken place, was given to the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) in October 2020 before it was taken over by the CBI in the last week of April 2021. Babu Ram, Superintendent of Police, Kanpur sector, Economic Office Wing (EOW), while speaking to The Sunday Guardian, said that they have handed over all the material documents of the case to the CBI, including affidavits that were submitted by the investors, the statement of the three accused whom they were to interrogate before the case was transferred.
“From October till April, when the case was with us, we put in a lot of effort. Our Investigating officer had gone to Singh’s house to call him for questioning, but his lawyer told us he would appear in a few days, but by then he got bail and the CBI then took over the case. We had completed all the formalities seeking his custody. The case is very strong against Singh and his associates and it is a fit case for filing a charge sheet against him,” said.
According to official sources, this scam was put into operation in 2010 and went on till December 2018 when the office of the Alchemist Infra Township Limited in Kanpur was abruptly closed down, even as the deadline for handing over the promised residential plots and buildings and returning the money invested came close.
It was then people realized that they had been duped. The 60 years old Fatehgarh, Punjab born and Chandigarh-based Singh, was first nominated to the Rajya Sabha in July 2010 by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha before he defected to the Trinamool Congress days later. He was re-nominated to the Rajya Sabha by TMC chief Mamata Banerjee in April 2014.
As per police sources who have questioned three of the seven named accused in the scam, a large amount of money that was collected by Singh and his associates from the Kanpur-based investors was used in the April 2011 West Bengal elections by Singh.
“At that time, Singh officially was worth Rs 10,000 crore apart from the money that he was earning from multiple such dubious schemes that he was running across the country, which were all a part of unaccounted cash. The interrogation of Singh’s associates has revealed that the same money was being diverted to West Bengal and used in the 2011 elections,” a police source told The Sunday Guardian. At least 10,000-plus people have invested in the schemes that Singh had launched. Other than K.D. Singh, other directors of the company, against whom FIR was filed in the case by the UP police include Satyendra Kumar Singh, Sucheta Khemka, Jaishri Prakash, Brajmohan Mahajan, Chatrasal Singh alias Narendra Singh and Nand Kishore Singh.
Singh was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January 2021 under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) before being granted bail on 6 April. Days later, the CBI filed two separate cases against Singh on 9 and 15 April respectively for promising to investors that their income will be doubled and for cheating investors by taking money from them in lieu of residential plots and buildings.