Chandigarh, June 21 (IANS) The Punjab vigilance arrested Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Sanjay Popli and his secretary on corruption charges.
As per the FIR, Popli allegedly sought one per cent commission from a contractor of a Rs 7 crore sewerage project in the Nawanshahr town during the previous Congress regime.
The contractor paid Rs 3.5 lakh through Sanjeev Vats, a Superintendent-level official posted as secretary to the officer, who was heading the Water Supply and Sewerage Board, on January 12.
The officials said Popli was seeking the remaining Rs 3.5 lakh from the contractor, who recorded his phone calls and complained on the anti-corruption helpline set up by the present Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
The officer was arrested from his house in Chandigarh on Monday evening.
He is lodged in Haryana's Sunaria jail since 2017 after being convicted in rape and murder cases. He has a large number of followers in Punjab, which is going to the polls on February 20.
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal on Monday said a chief minister from whose frontman and nephew Rs 10 crore in cash and gold and ill-gotten property papers of Rs 56 crore had been recovered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) could not be called poor by any yardstick.
According to a CVoter-ABP News opinion poll released on Monday evening, the AAP is set to win Punjab with a wafer-thin majority while the Congress appears to be way behind, with the Akali Dalled alliance and the BJP-led alliance in collaboration with former Congress chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh trail behind the two leading contenders.
The accused were identified as Mohit Sharma, Rishab Jaitley, Aman Gupta, Sachin Chhabra, Manav, Deepak Agarwal, Saurabh Chabbras and Sachin, all residents of Delhi.
In Punjab, it has not been very long since Bhagwant Mann was projected as the chief ministerial candidate by the Aam Aadmi Party. The Congress announced Charanjit Singh Channi as the CM face just recently.
Suneel Narayan, a 34-year-old finance professional from Bengaluru had, in 2018, registered himself as a potential blood stem cell donor with non-profit organization DKMS BMST Foundation India, dedicated to the fight against blood cancer and blood disorders, such as Thalassemia and Aplastic anaemia.
