New Delhi: The CBI has issued lookout notice against Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's son-in-law Gurpal Singh in connection with the alleged bank fraud case of Rs 109.08 crore by Simbhaoli Sugars Ltd, an official said on Wednesday.

The agency also issued the circular against three other top former executives of Simbhaoli Sugars Ltd -- CEO G.S.C. Rao, Chief Financial Officer Sanjay Thapar and Executive Director Gursimran Kaur Mann.

Simbhaoli Sugars, one of the largest sugar mills in the country, and its executives are being probed for cheating Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) in 2011 by availing credit facilities on the pretext of financing sugarcane farmers.

The agency had registered a case against the sugar mill, its Chairman Gurmit Singh Mann, the then (in 2015) Deputy Managing Director Gurpal Singh (now director) and others in connection with the alleged bank loan fraud.

Rao, Tapriya, Gursimran Kaur Mann and five non-executive directors were also booked by the agency.

The CBI had carried out searches at eight premises including residences of the directors, factory, corporate office and registered office of the company in Delhi, Hapur and Noida.

The probe focuses on two loans -- Rs 97.85 crore which was declared fraudulent in 2015 and another corporate loan of Rs 110 crore which was used to repay the previous loan.

 

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El Fasher (AP): Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organisation said on Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation's civil war escalated in recent days.

The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, which local officials blamed on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, came as the group has seen apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan. That includes Burhan appearing near a burning oil refinery north of Khartoum on Saturday that his forces said they seized from the RSF.

International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.

In the Saudi hospital attack in El Fasher, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered the death toll in a post on the social platform X.

Officials and others in the capital of North Darfur province had cited a similar figure Saturday, but Ghebreyesus is the first international source to provide a casualty number. Reporting on Sudan is incredibly difficult given communication challenges and exaggerations by both the RSF and the Sudanese military.

“The appalling attack on Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” Ghebreyesus wrote. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”

Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked Saturday, he added.

“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” he wrote. “Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”

Ghebreyesus did not identify who launched the attack, though local officials had blamed the RSF for the assault. 

The RSF and Sudan's military began fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.

Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll in the civil war.