On Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Rajdeep Singh, a close aide of former Congress minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu in Punjab after the raid in Khanna, Punjab, for an alleged connection in the food grain transportation tenders scam. The accused is a commission agent by profession and is said to be a close associate of many politicians.
The ED on August 1 had arrested former Punjab minister and Congress leader Bharat Bhushan Ashu in a tender "scam"-linked money-laundering case. Ashu (53) was taken into custody after questioning at the zonal office of the federal agency. The ED had raided the premises of Ashu, Raman Balasubramanium, a former chairman of the Ludhiana Improvement Trust, and some others in August 2023.
The money-laundering investigation stems from a Punjab Vigilance Bureau FIR related to the state government's transportation and labour cartage policy of 2021 and complaints related to a Ludhiana Improvement Trust "scam" regarding allotment of plots to bogus persons.
It was alleged that the tenders "were allotted to contractors who approached the minister (Ashu) through Rakesh Kumar Singla, chairman of CVC, Food and Civil Supplies", the ED had said. Ashu is a former minister of food and civil supplies in the Punjab government.
The money-laundering investigation was started after an FIR by Punjab Vigilance Bureau pertaining to the state government's transportation and labour cartage policy of 2021. Besides this, several complaints in connection with the Ludhiana Improvement Trust scam involving allotment of plots to bogus persons were also lodged, leading to the money-laundering probe.
