Punjab: Former director of Agriculture Department acquitted in pesticide scam

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, April 5

The Court of the Additional District and Sessions Judge, Bathinda, has acquitted former director of the Agriculture Department, Mangal Singh Sandhu and two others, while two persons have been sentenced to two-year imprisonment each in the 2015 pesticide scam case.

The police could not prove that anyone had bribed Sandhu. While hearing the case, Additional District and Sessions Judge Hira Singh Gill held the two accused Vijay Kumar and Subham Goyal guilty and sentenced them to two-year imprisonment each and acquitted Sandhu and two others — Ankush Goyal and Nirankar Singh — as prosecution failed to prove its case.

Sandhu’s name came up during the probe in 2015 and the Bathinda police registered a case against him.

On September 2, 2015, the police registered a case regarding the supply of fake pesticides and arrested a representative of the supplier.

The representative had claimed that the Director, Department of Agriculture, had allegedly taken bribe for supplying fake pesticides. The challan was submitted in 2016.

On September 2, 2015, on the complaint of officials of the Department of Agriculture, the Rama Mandi police raided the warehouse of M/s Coromandel Crop Science and registered a case after recovering a large quantity of fake pesticides.

On September 5, samples were sent for testing. Twentyfive samples failed the test while 10 passed. On September 15, the police arrested M/s Coromandel Crop Science’s partner Vijay Kumar.

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