Its FIR, quoting the SIT letter, stated: “FIR number 2 dated 20.12.2021 registered under sections 25, 27A and 29 of the NDPS Act 1985 at Punjab state crime police station, SAS Nagar, against Bikram Singh Majithia and others is being investigated by the special investigation team (SIT) and has uncovered substantial evidence indicating acquisition of assets disproportionate to the known sources of income of Bikram Singh Majithia and his wife Ganieve Kaur.”
“That Bikram Singh Majithia has accumulated vast wealth, properties, and business interests in his name or in the name of his family members, which appear to be grossly disproportionate to his legitimate income. In the course of the investigation, the material connected establishes that the assets have been acquired through proceeds of illegal activities, and it amounts to illicit enrichment of resources,” states the FIR.
Majithia has been the strongest critic of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government ever since it came to power in the state in March 2022. Posting regularly on his social media accounts, Majithia has been attacking Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, in particular, making fun of his lifestyle, especially his alleged drinking habits.
A team of at least three dozen policemen raided Majithia’s house and took him away after hours of high drama and amid sloganeering against the Punjab government by Akali supporters who started gathering outside the Majithia house. “Another vigilance team has also entered our Chandigarh house,” said his wife, Ganieve Kaur, an MLA from Majitha.
Releasing live videos of his arrest, Majithia alleged that he was “expecting” the arrest as he had been taking on the working of government. “The case against me is to stop me from speaking against the AAP regime,” said Majithia, adding that other opposition leaders too had faced the brunt of speaking up.
Majithia said the previous vigilance bureau chief, S.P.S. Parmar, was removed as he had refused to register his case. “This is nothing but a move to try and silence me. But this would not work. The case has nothing in it, with all the charges just cooked up,” he added.
Speaking in Delhi during a meeting with two AAP MLAs who won in the recently concluded by-elections in Punjab and Gujarat, Kejriwal said the AAP government in Punjab had no tolerance for those who dealt in drugs. He said political leaders had been sheltering international drug smugglers, something intolerable. “No matter how prominent a leader is, they will have to pay a price for it,” Kejriwal said in his speech posted on X.
Aman Arora, a Punjab cabinet minister and state AAP chief, told media persons that the action against Majithia was taken on the basis of a report submitted by the SIT to the vigilance bureau and that there was no element of political vendetta in it.
Other AAP leaders have also denied charges of political vendetta.
Also Read: End of 3-month anti-drug push, Punjab DGP says battle won but war continues; Oppn calls it ‘ceasefire’
‘Majithia made money as a minister’
The FIR stated that Majithia became an elected member of the legislature in 2007 and later took charge as a cabinet minister. “Evidence indicates that during his tenure as cabinet minister, there has been a disproportionate increase in the assets of Majithia, where he acquired huge wealth from illegal means,” the FIR said.
According to the FIR, before taking charge as an MLA in 2007, Majithia was the director and shareholder of five companies registered between 1956 and 1998—all run under the family business name “Saraya”. When Majithia became a minister for the sector of non-conventional energy, six new companies—five power companies and one air ambulance company—were added to his family’s business empire.
“Preliminary investigations reveal that more than Rs 540 crore of drug money has been laundered through several ways, including unaccounted cash worth Rs 161 crore deposited in bank accounts of companies controlled by Bikram Singh Majithia; channelisation of Rs 141 crore through suspected foreign entities; excess deposition of Rs 236 crore without disclosure or explanation in company financial statements, and acquisition of movable and immovable assets by Bikram Singh Majithia, without any legitimate source of income,” a vigilance bureau press statement added.
According to the statement, these transactions are under investigation by the vigilance bureau. The SIT probe—the statement added—clarified that the funds were laundered drug money funnelled into Saraya Industries, as facilitated by Majithia.
A vigilance bureau spokesperson said so far, investigators had tracked Rs 540 crore of drug money, generated illegally by Majithia using his influence as a public servant.
According to the spokesperson, SIT has conducted searches and seizures in connection with 22 persons, and the vigilance bureau has covered three locations. Combined, they have recovered over 30 mobile phones, five laptops, three iPads, two desktops, several diaries, property documents, and documents related to Saraya Industries.
Majithia, a vociferous AAP critic
The move to arrest Majithia came within days of his having taken a dig at the “failing health” of Bhagwant Mann and his “inability” to run the government. Majithia alleged that Mann was hospitalised and demanded complete transparency from the government regarding the CM’s health.
In March, Majithia alleged that there was an “interesting” story about why the CM was sporting dark glasses while attending the budget session of the Vidhan Sabha, hinting that Mann had received a blow to his face. In the past few months, Majithia would address the media, wearing dark glasses mocking Mann and openly challenging him, while twirling his moustache, asking him to “do whatever he can” against Majithia.
Last week, Majithia released on social media some pictures of physical intimacy between AAP minister Ravjot Singh and his ex-wife, saying the pictures were yet another example of what other AAP ministers such as “Balkar and Kataruchak” were up to, referring to cabinet ministers who previously faced allegations of sexual misdemeanours after their purported obscene videos had surfaced.
For the past few months, Majithia has also been regularly posting pictures and videos of Punjab youth taking drugs to prove that the flagship programme of the Mann government—‘Yudh Nasheyan Virudh (war against drugs)’—was a failure.
On Sunday, Majithia posted a video of a drug addict barely able to walk. Majithia claimed the video was from the Maqboolpura area in Amritsar. “Is this the war against drugs? Have some shame,” he wrote on X, tagging the chief minister and the Punjab DGP in his post. On Monday, he posted another video of a young woman lying senseless on the roadside in Amritsar, allegedly under the influence of drugs.
Last week, Majithia levelled allegations against cabinet minister Manjinder Singh Lalpura that his relative Baldev Gora beat up a woman. He added that Gora was earlier involved in illegal mining and beating up a government employee.
Majithia was also regularly posting videos of criminal activities in Punjab caught on camera to criticise the government for the law and order situation. He has also been taking on Mann for allowing the AAP-Delhi leadership to take over Punjab’s administration in the past few months.
Even before the AAP came to power, the top AAP leaders, Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh, were at loggerheads with Majithia. In the AAP campaign for the 2017 assembly elections, Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh called Majithia a “drug smuggler” at various public rallies.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) booked Majithia in 2014 on the statement of an alleged drug smuggler, Jagdish Bhola, who reportedly told the ED that Majithia had links with drug smugglers. Majithia was questioned in the case multiple times. He was then a minister in the SAD-BJP government.
To counter the Akali leadership then in power, the AAP centered its election campaign against Majithia and his alleged links with drug smugglers. However, Majithia filed defamation cases against Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh.
During the defamation trial, in 2018, Kejriwal issued an unequivocal apology for having made the drug charges against Majithia. However, Sanjay Singh refused to apologise, and the case against him is continuing.
Also Read: ‘One nation, one husband scheme?’ Bhagwant Mann takes a dig at BJP over ‘sindoor politics’
Opposition backs Majithia
With his witty and no-holds-barred style of criticising the government, Majithia has gained a substantial social media following—one of the factors driving his emergence as a dominant leader within the Shiromani Akali Dal, overshadowing other senior opposition leaders at times.
Reacting to the Majithia arrest, Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Badal wrote on X: “It is clear that chief minister @BhagwantMann & @AamAadmiParty have been unnerved by the resolute manner in which Mr Majithia has taken on the govt and exposed its corrupt and amoral acts. We will not be cowed down by the brutal attempts to suppress the voice of the people expressed by Mr Majithia and other Akali leaders by letting loose state agencies against them.”
Majithia is not the first to have levelled allegations against the Mann government’s tactics of using police cases to silence dissent.
In April, Punjab Police booked senior Congressman and opposition leader Partap Singh Bajwa for making a controversial comment. In a TV interview, Bajwa while highlighting a series of grenade attacks in Punjab had said that 50 bombs had “reached Punjab”, and 18 of them had been used, whereas the rest would be used. Bajwa, thereby, was booked for “creating disharmony and spreading false and misleading information”. Bajwa had been lashing out at the CM leading to abusive verbal duels between the two in the Vidhan Sabha. After he was booked, Bajwa alleged that he was being targeted for holding the government accountable.
Punjab Police arrested another Congress leader, Sukhpal Khaira, a vocal critic of Kejriwal and Mann, in September 2023 in a case under the NDPS Act in 2015. Undeterred, Khaira continued to attack the AAP government.
After the March 2024 arrest of Kejriwal, Khaira wrote on X that Kejriwal and his family probably will now appreciate what happens when vendetta politics play out. He publicly celebrated the AAP’s crushing defeat in the Delhi elections in February this year.
On Wednesday, Bajwa and Khaira came out in support of Majithia on X.
“The incident is condemnable. The house of a lady MLA was searched without giving any prior notice, which is illegal. Mann should also look within himself and see what he and his men are doing, including those from Delhi,” said Bajwa on X.
BJP leader and Union Minister Ravneet Bittu condemned the AAP government for unleashing terror on those who criticise it.
“One cannot be persecuted merely for challenging the CM, just as one cannot be let off for succumbing to CM’s threats,” BJP chief in Punjab, Sunil Kumar Jakhar, wrote in an X post. “Action against corruption must be transparent, uniform, and rooted in due process, not driven by personal or political vendetta. Anything less weakens the very institutions we are sworn to uphold.”
Amritsar West’s AAP MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, known to take on his government on several issues, criticised the vigilance bureau for behaving in a “disgraceful manner” with a woman during the raid.
‘Ready whenever and wherever you call me’
Releasing live videos of his arrest, Majithia claimed that almost fifty men, claiming they were policemen from the vigilance bureau, banged on his gate with their boots and “barged” in Wednesday morning.
Majithia said none of the cops wore their uniform, so he had no way of confirming they were Punjab police. He said the vigilance team threatened his staff, misbehaved with his wife, and terrorised his children. The videos show his wife, MLA Ganieve Kaur, levelling allegations of misbehaviour against the team raiding the house.
At the Majithia household, the high drama continued till the arrival of AIG (vigilance) Swarandeep Singh, after which, an official vehicle took away Majithia as Akali supporters raised slogans protesting against Majithia’s arrest.
On his way out, Majithia bid goodbye to his two sons. He also explained in the video how both ends of the road leading to his house had been blocked by the cops.
Giving a twirl to his moustache, a peculiar mannerism he had recently been using to challenge the CM, Majithia said, “Bhagwant Mann, I had said I’ll be ready whenever and wherever you call me, but remember that one day I’ll make you scream too.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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