ED arrests Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew in illegal sand mining case

|HT|

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Bhupinder Singh alias Honey, Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew, in an alleged illegal sand mining case on Friday. It was due to produce him in a court in Jalandhar to seek his custody. The arrest came days before the assembly polls in Punjab.

The ED on January 18 conducted raids at the premises of Bhupinder Singh, his business partners, and six miners in Mohali, Ludhiana, Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar, and Pathankot. The agency said it seized ₹10 crore and valuables from Bhupinder Singh and his partner Sandeep Kumar during the raids that continued till January 19.

The ED has said Bhupinder Singh, Kumar, and Kudrat Deep Singh set up a firm named Provider Overseas Consultancy Limited in 2018 with 33.33% stakes each. The firm had a turnover of ₹18.77 lakh in 2019-2020, according to the audit report available on the website of the Union ministry of corporate affairs.

The Punjab Police first filed an alleged illegal sand mining case in the matter in 2018. In their First Information Report (FIR) in the case, they named 26 accused, mostly truck drivers. It was registered on the complaint of the Punjab mining department, which found sand quarries were being run without approval during its raids in 2018. Bhupinder Singh was not named in the FIR while Kudrat Deep Singh was exonerated following a police inquiry. The ED lodged a separate case at its zonal office in Jalandhar in November last year after taking over the probe.

Channi last month accused the Centre of misusing central agencies to intimidate him ahead of the elections. He added it tried the same in West Bengal against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and failed.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)