CBI court grants bail to Hooda in Manesar land scam
Chandigarh, May 1: In a breather for former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a special CBI court on Tuesday granted him bail in a multi-crore rupee Manesar land scam.
Hooda appeared before the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Panchkkula, adjoining Chandigarh, on Tuesday.
The bail was granted after Hooda furnished two bonds of Rs 5 lakh each through his counsel.
Alleging a multi-crore scam of prime land in Manesar in Haryana's realty goldmine district of Gurugram, the CBI, in February this year, filed a chargesheet in the land deal against Hooda, senior bureaucrats and others.
The chargesheet named 34 accused including senior bureaucrats Chhattar Singh, S.S. Dhillon and M.L. Tayal and promoter of Gurgaon-based real estate company ABW Builders, Atul Bansal.
All three officers were powerful principal secretaries to the Chief Minister.
The CBI registered a case against the accused in September 2015 following allegations that private builders, in conspiracy with public servants of the Haryana government, had bought around 400 acres of land from farmers and landowners of Manesar, Naurangpur and Lakhnoula villages in Gurugram (then Gurgaon) district at throwaway prices.
The land was valued, at that time, at around Rs 1,600 crore but it was bought by the builders for around Rs 100 crore.
The land was bought in the period from August 2004 to August 2007. The Congress government in Haryana, led by Chief Minister Hooda, remained in power from March 2005 to October 2014.
The CBI alleged that ABW Builders conspired with officers during the tenure of the previous Congress government to purchase the land.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
