The Punjab Vigilance Bureau has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the alleged illegal land sale by the Pearls Group.
The state government had handed over the probe to the Vigilance Bureau earlier this month. The newly constituted SIT will investigate the FIRs registered against the Pearls Group promoters at Ferozepur and Mohali.
As per the orders issued by the VB Chief Director Virender Kumar, the SIT will be headed by VB Director Rahul S. Other members of the SIT are Kanwaldeep Singh, Additional Director (Administration), Paramjit Singh Rana, AIG, Salamuddin and Navdeep Singh,both DSPs, Mohit Dhawan and Madhvi Kalyan, both Inspectors.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had recently assured the investors of Pearls Group that the state government will think of ways to bring the accused in the scam to justice and to ensure that they get their due.
The two FIRs at Ferozepur in 2020 and in State Crime Police Station at Mohali in February 2023 allege that the accused persons in the Pearls chit fund scam had allegedly illegally disposed off assets to the tune of Rs 1200 crore.
The police had booked the owner of the group, Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, and several other close to him. The two FIRs had been registered under sections 420, 406, 465, 467, 468, 471, 384 of the IPC.
Earlier, the then Ferozepur Range IG, Jatinder Singh Aulakh headed a Punjab Police SIT formed to investigate this scam.
Earlier this March, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had arrested Harchand Singh Gill, a director and shareholder of PGF Limited, one of the companies of the Pearl group, after his extradition from Fiji in collaboration with Interpol.
A team of CBI officials had gone to Suva in Fiji to bring Gill after being deported from the archipelago under Operation Trishul and was placed under arrest after landing here.
Gill had an open-dated Non-Bailable Warrant (NBW) of arrest against him issued by a special court. The CBI had got a Red Notice published against him through Interpol.
Pearls Group had allegedly collected around Rs 60,000 crore from nearly 5.5 crore investors across the country by illegally operating different investment schemes.