Congress leader Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra and former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda were booked today by the Haryana Police for alleged irregularities in a Gurgaon land deal.
An FIR against Vadra, Hooda and two companies—DLF Ltd. and Onkareshwar Properties Pvt Ltd—has been registered at Kherki Daula police station in Gurgaon, Manesar Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajesh Kumar told PTI. “We received a complaint today from one Surinder Sharma, resident of Nuh, in which he alleged irregularities in the land deals.”
Earlier in February, Hooda and 33 others were chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a case of alleged corruption in Manesar land deals worth over Rs 1,500 crore. That chargesheet related to land transactions in Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula villages of Gurgaon.
Vadra later alleged that it was an effort by the Bharatiya Janata Party government to divert attention from real issues like rising oil prices, according to ANI.
Election season, increase in oil prices...so let's divert real people's issues with my decade old issue. What's new?: Robert Vadra's statement on FIR against him (file pic) pic.twitter.com/Ev8ybmNwKR
The BJP had made the land deals a major poll issue in 2014, alleging that Vadra benefited through questionable land use permissions granted by the earlier Congress government in the state led by Hooda.
In the FIR lodged Saturday, the complainant alleged that Vadra's Skylight Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. purchased 3.5 acre of land in Gurgaon's Sector 83 from Onkareshwar Properties at a price of Rs 7.50 crore in 2008, when Hooda was chief minister and also held the portfolio of Town and County Planning Department.
Later, Skylight Hospitality sold this land to realty major DLF for Rs 58 crore, after procuring commercial licence for the development of the colony with Hooda's influence, the complainant alleged.
He alleged that 350 acres of land was allotted to DLF at Wazirabad in Gurgaon in violation of rules which made the realty major gain Rs 5,000 crore.
The Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government had set up a one-man commission in May 2015 to probe the grant of licences for developing commercial colonies by the Department of Town and Country Planning in Gurgaon's Sector 83.
The Justice S N Dhingra Commission, formed under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, had examined the licences given by the then Hooda government for the development of housing societies and commercial complexes in four Guragon villages of Sihi, Shikohpur, Kherki Daula and Sikanderpur Bada.
Vadra and Hooda have now been booked under Sections 420 (cheating), 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the IPC, and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
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