VB ARRESTS CLOSE AIDE OF PEARLS GROUP OWNER BHANGOO
FEROZEPUR: Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Thursday arrested a close associate of Pearls group owner Nirmal Singh Bhangoo in Ferozepur.
The Pearls Group had allegedly cheated over 5 crore people across the country, including thousands of investors from Punjab, on the pretext of investing money in various schemes of the group.
The arrested individual, Vikram Singh from Fazilka, along with his cousin Rajinder Kumar, purportedly acquired land in Fazilka district for Pearls Golden Forest Limited.
“The transaction, involving 8 kanals 8 marlas of land in village Ram Nagar, was recorded on deed No. 583 on May 10, 2010. Vikramdeep, allegedly aided by his father Satnam Dass, manipulated land records with the collusion of revenue department officials, patwari Wazir Singh, kanungo Paramjit Singh, and tehsildar Amarjit Singh. They inflated the land price, misrepresented the area, and secured mutations for 78 kanals 8 marlas, enabling Vikram to obtain a loan of ₹9.90 lakh. Meanwhile, Rajinder Kumar obtained a loan of ₹8 lakh,” a VB spokesperson said.
Vikram was produced in a Zira court on Friday, which remanded him to judicial custody, according to his counsel Mehar Singh Mal.
Satnam Dass, Rajinder Kumar, and patwari Wazir Singh are already arrested and are presently in judicial custody.
In February 2023, the Punjab government transferred the investigation into the Pearls Group chit-fund scam to the vigilance bureau. VB is probing two FIRs related to the scam, registered in Ferozepur in 2020 and at the state crime police station in Mohali in 2023.
In 2016, the Supreme Court appointed a committee headed by former chief justice of India RM Lodha to sell properties of the group. In 2017, the committee told the apex court that the group’s total liability was ₹80,000 crore, but its properties were worth ₹7,600 crore.