With a court on Wednesday discharging Punjab Chief Minister (CM) and others in the alleged Rs 1,140-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam, Amarinder Singh said it was a victory in the fight against what was brazenly an act of political victimisation.

A Ludhiana court accepted the closure report presented by the state vigilance bureau and discharged all the 31 accused in the case registered in 2007 when Amarinder-led government lost the polls and the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) came to power.

The vigilance bureau in its inquiry had then alleged that Amarinder and others caused a loss of at least Rs 1,144 crore to the exchequer by ‘favouring’ private company M/S Today Homes and awarding it the contract by ‘tampering bids’.

But later just three days before results of the 2017 Punjab polls were announced on March 11, VB conducted a ‘re-investigation’ and filed closure report (under Section 173(8) of CrPC) within five months, in the Ludhiana court of sessions judge Gurbir Singh on August 19, 2017. The report gave a clean chit to all accused and said that there was no scam at all.

This closure report was challenged by former DGP Sumedh Singh Saini and others but the same were dismissed by the sessions court today with the observation that they had no locus standi to challenge the report.

Sessions judge Gurbir Singh, while accepting the closure report moved by the vigilance bureau giving clean chit to CM and all accused, said that no case of corruption had been made out against any of the accused.

There was no evidence against any accused, the judge ruled, adding that former chairman Improvement Trust, Paramjit Singh, also did not indulge in corruption though he may be accused of disobeying the orders of his senior.

Welcoming the city court’s verdict,  the CM said the truth had prevailed and their stand against the politically motivated charges had been fully vindicated.

Speaking to reporters outside the court soon after the judgment was pronounced, Amarinder said it had taken 13 years for the victory to come but the court verdict had shown that truth always wins in the end.

The manufactured lies presented as evidence before the court by the petitioners had no leg to stand on, and had been totally exposed as nothing but shameless falsehoods, he added.

Amarinder, however, lamented the cost the victims had to pay in the process while they waited for their names to be cleared and their reputations to be restored. Five of the 36 accused in the case had, in this period, gone to their graves with the stigma of being involved in the scam, he pointed out, adding that with their names getting cleared, their families could now finally live in peace.