The district police on Tuesday arrested suspended Punjab Police Assistant Inspector General (AIG) Malwinder Singh Sidhu in an alleged extortion case after some incriminating recordings were found in a recorder recovered from Sidhu when he was arrested by the Vigilance Bureau (VB) last year.
The accused AIG was produced in a court and remanded to a three-day police custody.
According to information, a fresh case was registered against Sidhu under Sections 384 (extortion), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC and Section 7-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act at Phase-VIII police station. Sidhu was arrested after registration of the case.
DSP (city-2) Harsimran Singh Bal confirmed the arrest and said police were investigating the case. He refused to divulge details of the recordings on the basis of which the case was registered. “We are investigating it and can disclose things only after questioning him,” the DSP added.
Sources in the police told that during the forensic examination of the recorder that was recovered from Sidhu by the VB when he was arrested in a corruption case, some recordings were found which indicated that Sidhu was extorting money from people.
“The preliminary investigation had indicated that Sidhu, along with his accomplices, was making extortion calls to people and threatening to frame them,” the sources added.
AIG Sidhu was posted in the Human Rights Cell when he was arrested by the VB in November last year. It was alleged in the VB FIR that Sidhu was impersonating the IG posted in VB.
In the past, a spokesperson for the VB had said in a statement that Sidhu used to initiate complaints against government employees, only to subsequently withdraw them in order to blackmail them for illicit gains. The statement also said that during the investigation, it was found that Sidhu, serving as the AIG of the Human Rights Cell since 2017, never held the positions of AIG or IG within the VB in the past five years.
This article was published on The Indianexpress.
