Rs 1-cr paddy scam surfaces in Moga

Moga : A paddy scam of Rs 1 crore has been unearthed at a rice mill in Dhurkot Ransih village of Moga district, police officials said here on Monday.
A case under Sections 409 and 420 of the IPC has been registered against Harbhajan Singh, son of Mukand Singh, owner of GD Agro-Food Industry, at the Badhni Kalan police station.
The Punjab State Warehouse Corporation (PSWC) stored as many as 1,13,869 bags of paddy allotted by the Food and Civil Supplies Department in the said rice mill during 2017-2018 for custom milling.
However, during a physical verification of the rice mill, PSWC officials found that 17,982 bags of paddy were missing from its store, the total weight of which was 6,743.25 quintals.
The mill was supposed to deliver the custom-milled rice of the whole stock to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in the central pool. The time to deliver the stock was till March 31. Although this mill was granted an extra time till April 30 to deliver the remaining rice (custom-milled paddy) to the FCI, it again failed to deliver the same.
The PSWC authorities served several notices to the rice mill to complete the stock, but to no avail.
This issue was brought to the notice of District Magistrate Dilraj Singh Sandhawalia by the PSWC authorities. The DM asked SSP Raj Jit Singh Hundal to register a case against the owner of the rice mill. The police also conducted a preliminary inquiry before registering the case against the mill owner. Meanwhile, the local PSWC authorities revealed that a separate legal civil suit to recover the monetary losses will also be filed against the rice mill soon.