Drug lord Kandola names two police officers

Tuesday, 03/12/2013

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20131203/punjab.htm#3

Jalandhar : Two senior Punjab Police officers may be in trouble for their alleged links with drug lord Raja Kandola. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has decided to seek a point-by-point clarification from the two officers about their bank accounts and properties.

The names of Paramraj Singh Umranangal, Inspector General (IG) , Bathinda Range, and Balwinder Singh, Superintendent of Police (SP), Detective, Mohali, have surfaced in the confessional statement of Raja Kandola submitted during the ongoing investigations.

The ED will hand over the questionnaire to the officers within a week. The latter will be given a week to submit their replies, ED sources said.

The Punjab Police had arrested Kandola last year. The ED had attached Kandola’s four properties worth over Rs 20 crore. He and his wife Rajwant Kaur had never filed any Income Tax return.

The ED has initiated an investigation into the properties and other assets of the two police officers in the light of written disclosures by Kandola before ED sleuths.

“If it is found that no drug money has been used, we cannot invoke the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against the officers,” said an official.

Kandola, in his statement to the ED, has reportedly described the two police officers as his “friends”. He has not named any other police official and politician so far. Umranangal and Balwinder Singh have denied any links with Kandola and his drug trade.

The ED has not issued summons to the officers at this stage as no case has been registered so far. It is, however, in the process of seeking a detailed clarification from the officers in respect to their properties and bank accounts.

The motive is not to determine whether Kandola was known to these two officers, but to ascertain if any drug money was used by them.

With the surfacing of the names of two senior officers in the multi-crore Kandola drug racket, the Punjab Police has initiated an “in-house” investigation into the possible links between police officers and Kandola and the nature of these links.

Raja Kandola, it is learnt, has told the ED that Balwinder Singh was not only a “regular’ visitor to his farmhouse in Samrala, but would also stay there for a long time. “We will act only if we find out they were working together to earn drug money,” said an ED official.

Kandola’s Samrala farmhouse has been attached along with his other properties at Ropar and Gurgaon. The ED, it is learnt, is in the process of attaching 10 more properties on the basis of his confessional statement.

Kandola was arrested by the Jalandhar police in June last year along with synthetic drug “ICE” worth over Rs 200 crore. Among 21 others arrested for being involved in the trade were his wife Rajwant, paramour Vanya Khanna and son Balley Singh.