Vigilance pegs Langah assets at Rs 13 crore

In its continuing operation to unearth assets allegedly amassed illegally by former Akali minister Sucha Singh Langah, the Vigilance Bureau,...

In its continuing operation to unearth assets allegedly amassed illegally by former Akali minister Sucha Singh Langah, the Vigilance Bureau, which booked him for of cheating, forgery and corruption, today pegged the value of assets detected so far at Rs 12.60 crore, giving extensive details of his and his family members’ land holdings, societies, industrial plots, and what it broadly classified ‘benami properties’.

The Bureau men also swooped down on some of Langah’s associates today, and booked the former PWD minister under sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 120-B of the IPC and 13(1) (a) (c) (d) (e), read with 13(2)88 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 registered at the VB’s Mohali police station.

A statement released by ADGP (Vigilance) A.P. Pandey claimed that during his tenure as MLA and minister from February 1997 to January 2002, Langah accumulated disproportionate assets beyond his known sources of income which totalled Rs 12.60 crore besides ‘‘the huge amount of money concealed in various lockers of different banks in India which will be unearthed during the course of the investigation’’.

Story continues below this ad

Detailing Langah’s alleged purchase of land, the VB claimed he had bought plots in Purewal Jatan, Kalyanpur, Allowal, Ranian and Fateh Nangal of 35 acres in the names of his wife, sons and daughters. While the official price of this land is Rs 1 crore, the market prices is Rs 5 crore.

Other assets included Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College Trust, Kalanaur in Gurdaspur, of which Langah was chairman while Amrik Singh of Mohali — arrested yesterday — was secretary. Other members of the ex-minister’s family were also members of the Society which had one acre of land purchased by Langah for Rs 40 lakh from the Improvement Trust Gurdaspur. The VB claimed Langah’s wife Harbhajan Kaur floated Khalsa Warehouse Pvt Ltd, a firm in Model Town Ludhiana to construct warehouse godowns following an agreement with PSWC for construction and renting out of eight godowns at Dhariwal and 20 at Jagraon.