New Delhi: The Delhi police has launched a preliminary enquiry into allegations of forgery, cheating and fraud against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, his brother-in-law and a public servant for alleged irregularities in grant of contracts for roads and sewer lines by the Public Works Department.
The Delhi police’s Economic Offences Wing has initiated the inquiry. No case had been registered till late evening. The move comes days after the complainant, Roads Anti-Corruption Organisation (Raco), moved to a court after having failed to get a criminal case of cheating registered at a local police station here.
Lawyer Kislay Pandey, who had first approached the police on behalf of Raco founder Ahul Sharma, had submitted that there were irregularities in the award of contacts for construction of roads and sewer lines by the chief minister, his brother-in-law Surender Kumar Bansal, who runs a construction company Messrs Renu Construction, and P.K. Kathuria, then PWD executive engineer posted in North Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh. He has sought lodging of a case against them for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.
“From the records retrieved and other sources, it has come out that Mr Surender Kumar Bansal operates Messrs Renu Construction Company and various other dummy companies in order to obtain contracts by way of fraud in criminal connivance with government servants posted at PWD,’’ the complaint alleged and cited RTI replies and other enquiries to back his claim.
Raco, an NGO which monitors public works, alleged that Mr Bansal had submitted fake bills and invoices to the PWD. The complaint alleged that the documents given to the PWD were “concocted and forged” by the accused, causing a loss of over Rs10 crore to the public exchequer.
It also alleged that the chief minister had caused substantive gains to Mr Bansal and others by using his influence, adding that his role must also be probed.
The complaint alleged that Mr Bansal operated through several dummy firms to obtain government contracts “in connivance with various senior PWD officials,” which never got executed “whereas, shockingly all the payments have been cleared under the pressure of Mr Kejriwal.”
