New Delhi, July 02: The Delhi High Court today issued notices to Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, state home secretary and five vigilance officials on a petition filed by Wimpy international employees who were arrested here in connection with a corruption case against Hardeep Singh, the then PA to former Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal. This is the second time in three days that the court has issued notices to Singh and nine others in this case.
Earlier, the vacation bench of Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice R S Sodhi had on Monday issued notices to Capt Singh, state home secretary, additional DG A P Pandey, Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh, DIGs Siddharth Chattopadyaya, K K Uppal and K J S Pannu (all vigilance officials), Delhi govt., DCP south and ACP Greater Kailash seeking explanation as to how Wimpy employees were taken to Punjab from the jurisdiction of the court.
Punjab government counsel D K Sharma accepted the notices for the state while advocate Akshay Bipin accepted the notices on behalf of the NCT of Delhi. The court asked Bipin how the Wimpy employees were taken out of Delhi without informing the local authorities. Sharma has been asked to explain as to why the accused were not produced in a Delhi court to seek transit remand and directly taken to Punjab. The replies are to be filed by July 4.
The first writ petition was filed by Wimpy International Ltd. and its employee Yash Paul Dhawan while the second one has been filed on behalf of other employees R K Gupta, Sanjeev Kulshreshtha, Harjinder Singh and Devinder Singh.
The Wimpy employees were allegedly arrested here by the state vigilance department on June 13-14 and taken to Punjab in a clandestine manner without intimating the local judicial or police authorities in connection with the case lodged at Mohali against Hardeep Singh. The probe agency alleged that Wimpy's chairman and managing director K S Sidhu, who figure in list of 200 richest Asians in Britain, helped the Badal family in converting their ill-gotten black money into white.
The petitioners' counsel alleged that wimpy and its employees were being harassed by the chief minister to settle political score with Prakash Singh Badal and his son Sukhbir Singh Badal who had filed a defamation case against him.
Terming the case against the petitioners and their employees as illegal and without any jurisdiction, Nayar requested the court to quash the proceedings against them or in the alternative transfer the same to Delhi.
The petitioners also sought direction to the respondents to register a case against those who "illegally" raided the company and the residences of some of its employees. Bureau Report