Punjab Govt orders FIR in Decade-Old Case, retired, serving among 16 Booked for causing revenue loss
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ April 2,2026
After an investigation, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) has booked 16 officials from the rural development department, ranging from divisional deputy director to panchayat secretary level, for allegedly causing financial losses to the government.
An FIR (No. 6) was registered on March 30, 2026, at the Vigilance Police Station in Patiala under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The accused include 15 men and one woman.
The case is related to the Patran block in Patiala district, where officials allegedly failed to auction around 350 acres of panchayat land in Hariau village nearly a decade ago. Two officials—Vinod Kumar Gagat, Deputy Director of Rural Development, and Surinder Singh Dhillon, Additional Deputy Commissioner (Development), Muktsar—have been arrested.
Both arrested individuals were presented in court and have been remanded to one-day police custody for further investigation.
Among the other accused are Malwinder Singh, Paramjit Kaur, Sutantar Singh (all retired) who remained posted as BDPO, and Teja Singh, Rajinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Rajinder Singh, Gurtej Singh, Jagvinder Singh, Amrik Singh, Harinder Singh Bhangu, Ram Singh and Sukhwinder Singh—all remained posted as gram sewak to panchyat secretary at the village concerned.
The FIR was registered following a report submitted by the Rural Development Secretary after a three-member committee found that officials, including a DDPO in Patiala and an ADC (Development), deliberately avoided auctioning the land for cultivation between 2015 and 2018. This allegedly resulted in a revenue loss estimated at Rs 5 crore.
The report further alleged that the decision was influenced by political patronage to benefit certain local residents aligned with the then ruling party. The officials even didn’t collect the fine from them.
An official stated that the issue had earlier been overlooked, with only departmental chargesheets issued. However, after the matter resurfaced, senior authorities ordered strict action and referred the case to the Vigilance Bureau for investigation.
Some reports suggest the FIR may be politically motivated, claiming the issue had already been addressed through departmental proceedings. However, officials maintain that the failure to conduct the auction constituted a serious administrative lapse that unfairly benefited a select group of individuals.
