Arrested Punjab ex-DGP Saini to be produced in court

Chandigarh, Aug 19 (IANS) The Punjab Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau has arrested former state Director General of Police (DGP) Sumedh Singh Saini in a fraud case pertaining to the sale of land in 2020 and is likely to be produced in a court on Thursday.

Saini, who is a Z-plus category protectee, reached the vigilance bureau office in Mohali, near here, on Wednesday evening to join the investigation in another case where he was formally arrested in the fraud case.

Interestingly, Saini, who was considered a blue-eyed boy of militancy-era police chief K.P.S. Gill and was credited with eliminating militancy in the state, had got an interim anticipatory bail from the Punjab and Haryana High Court in a disproportionate assets case and was asked to join the investigation within a week.

A 1982-batch IPS officer, Saini, has been facing multiple cases, including murder, abduction, corruption and human rights violations. Once he was heading the vigilance bureau too.

Officials told IANS that Saini has been kept in a barrack of the vigilance bureau since his arrest. He's likely to be produced in a Mohali court on Thursday.

Saini, who was removed from the top post by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in 2015 following incidents of sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib and subsequent violence in the state in which the police force was accused of excesses that left two people dead, has not been sharing cordial relations with current Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

In fact, Saini had challenged the vigilance bureau's closure report in the multi-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam involving Amarinder Singh.

For quite some time, Amarinder Singh had been seeking a probe into the fake gun battles and extra-judicial killings alleged to have taken place during militancy in Punjab.

Taking cognizance of the revelations made by a former Punjab Police constable, Gurmeet Singh, alias Pinky, wherein he had alleged in 2015 that a number of people were killed without trial during militancy in Punjab, Amarinder Singh had demanded the dismissal of DGP Saini and registration of a case against him.