Lucknow: A year after courting a controversy for inauguration of a beer bar, the Uttar Pradesh minister, Swati Singh, has embarrassed chief minister Yogi Adityanath again by allegedly threatening and forcing a police officer to quash the first information report against the tainted real estate giant Ansal API.
Ansal API’s vice chairman Pranav Ansal was arrested at the Delhi airport last month and has been imprisoned since then. In the first week of June, a Lucknow court had issued a non-bailable warrant against Sushil Ansal and his son Pranav Ansal. The firm is accused of a fraud worth Rs600 crore.
In a purported leaked conversation of Swati Singh (41) with the circle officer Ms Binu Singh on Friday which has gone viral, Singh reportedly pulled up the cop over the FIR filed on the complaint of a home-buyer who had charged the builder with fraud.
“Don’t you know the higher ups have ordered that no FIR would be registered against Ansals. All the cases against Ansals are fake,” Swati Singh, who is the minister of state for women and children development, NRI, flood control and agriculture export, can be heard saying in the alleged audio.
Her aides on Saturday clashed with scribes when they went to her residence to know her side of the story.
The Uttar Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (UP RERA) had received around 400 complaints against the group for fraud, non-delivery of their properties, failure in refunding their money and diversion of funds till middle of this year. The firm has allegedly diverted around Rs606 crore from various projects out of a total investment of around Rs2,400 crore, UP RERA chief had revealed earlier.
As the audio went viral, Yogi swung into action and summoned the state minister on Saturday morning. The meeting went on for 25 minutes.
The CM sought a report in the incident from the director general of police in 24 hours. DGP OP Singh told the media that senior superintendent of police, Lucknow, has been entrusted with the inquiry and its report would be shared with the CM within the stipulated time.
Observers speculate the action on Swati Singh was unlikely. “Rather the cop seems to be in trouble as the police investigation is focussed on ‘how the conversation was leaked’ not on whether the minister’s threat to the duty-bound officer was improper,” says a senior journalist.
