With one more arrest and revocation of another 12 dealerships for selling unauthorized non-certified seeds in Ludhiana, Punjab DGP Dinkar Gupta on Tuesday constituted a State-level Special Investigation Team (SIT) to get to the bottom of the racket across districts.
The SIT, headed by ADGP Punjab Bureau of Investigation (PBI) and State Crime Record Bureau (SCRB) Naresh Arora, will take over the Ludhiana SIT investigations conducted so far, and will also look into any other existing or future complaints regarding the sale of spurious or unauthorized seeds.
The SIT, which has IGP Crime Nageshwar Rao, Ludhiana Police Commissioner Rakesh Agrawal, Joint Director Agriculture Sukhdev Singh and Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Ashwani Kapoor as its members, has been tasked with expeditious completion of the probe to ensure that all culprits are identified and arrested at the earliest, said the DGP.
The SIT would work under the supervision of Director, Bureau of Investigation Punjab. Arora has also been mandated to co-opt any other domain expert or consultant or any other Police officer to take the investigations forward expeditiously.
FARMERS’ ASSOCIATION MEMBER ARRESTED
Giving details of the arrest made by Ludhiana SIT, set up to probe the case registered on complaint of Chief Agriculture Officer under sections 3, 8, 9 of Seed Control Order Act, 2, 3, 7 of Essential Commodities Act and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the DGP said that the accused had been identified as Baljinder Singh alias Ballian of Bhundri village of Ludhiana district.
Baljinder’s arrest followed that of Harwinder Singh alias Kaka Brar, who was arrested earlier for his alleged involvement in the scam. Owner of 34 acres of land in Jagraon, Baljinder is a member of farmers’ association formed by PAU to give information to farmers about new seeds and techniques. He was given the newly developed PR 128 and PR 129 of paddy seeds last year by PAU for sowing on trial basis to assess the results. However, he used the resultant crop to mass produce more seeds and sold them to Brar Seeds without authorization.
RAIDS AT PREMISES OF 1900 SEED DEALERS, 12 SEALED
Meanwhile, continuing with their crackdown on illegal or unauthorized sale of seeds, the Ludhiana district administration, accompanied by police and agriculture department officials, has so far raided or inspected a total 1,900 premises of seed dealers.
