The preliminary investigation accuses the trust of being in possession of large tracts of land in serious violation of the ceiling prescribed by the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reform Act, 1976. (File photo)
The CBI has launched a preliminary investigation to investigate allegations of land grabbing and corruption by an educational trust led by former J&K Minister Choudhary Lal Singh.
Singh had resigned from the BJP along with party leader Chander Prakash Ganga after the two resigned from the PDP-BJP coalition cabinet in the wake of a controversy over their public support for the demand for a CBI investigation by relatives of the defendants, who were arrested by the police on charges of gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Bakarwal girl in the forests of the Kathua district in 2018.
Singh did not respond to multiple attempts by The Indian Express to contact him for comment.
The preliminary investigation accuses the trust of being in possession of large tracts of land in serious violation of the ceiling prescribed by the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reform Act, 1976.
In addition, it was alleged that false certificates were issued, claiming that the land is under the exempt category under the Act, to allow the RB Educational Trust in Kathua to purchase agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, according to sources.
In public interest litigation in the High Court in 2015, SK Bhalla, a retired professor, had requested instructions from the state government to recover land that exceeded the ceiling prescribed in Section 2 (1) read with Section 14 of J&K Agrarian Reform Act of 1976.
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