Several officials of Punjab government’s sand mining department under scanner, says ED

The agency said that the alleged involvement and proximity of officials to Bhupinder Singh, alias Honey, nephew of the Punjab chief minister, was being investigated.

Seeking his further custodial interrogation in the alleged sand mining scam, the agency told the court that Singh was in “contact with various officials working in the state government in relation with sand mining activities”. The ED claimed that Singh had been “generating huge cash from illegal mining-related activities”.

The ED told the court it was scrutinising over 18 lakh pages ‘recovered from four digital devices belonging to Singh including his mobile phones’. The ED said it had so far scrutinised one lakh pages and confronted Singh with them. “The data has been used for gathering further leads,” according to the remand paper, reviewed by ET.

The Jalandhar court on Friday turned down the ED request to further interrogate Singh, who was arrested on February 3. The agency had sought seven more days of custodial interrogation. The court had observed that ED might take more than 100 days to examine the remaining 17 lakh documents. He stands remanded to 14 days judicial custody.

The data included mails and messages exchanged between Singh and other individuals, the ED claimed. The said devices were seized by the agency during its raid last month on Singh’s premises.

According to the ED claim, Singh has admitted that ‘₹10 crore recovered from his premises belonged to him’. The agency suspected that he amassed nearly ‘₹3 crore in return for facilitating the transfer of state government officials using his political links’. The alleged involvement of more individuals and “associates” of Singh is being investigated by the ED.

The ED on January 19 had claimed to have seized ₹10 crore and “incriminating documents”, which allegedly linked Singh with some shell companies. It was alleged that Singh had floated a company, Punjab Realtors, to secure sand mining contracts. Singh’s links with an individual named Kudrat Deep Singh is also being probed, it is learnt. Deep Singh had set up Provider Consultancy Services of which he, Bhupinder Singh and Sandeep Kumar were directors.