SAD leader and former MLA Mangat Rai Bansal and 21 others, including three Food Corporation of India officials, were today sentenced to seven-year in jail by a special CBI court in a case of cheating and defrauding.
Special Judge Hemant Gopal held Bansal and others guilty of wrongful gains by supplying sub standard rice, resulting in loss to the tune of Rs 1.8 crore to the FCI.
The CBI had filed the charge sheet against 28 persons including three FCI officials and 24 rice millers (including Bansal) in 2001.
Two accused had died during the trial while as many were acquitted and two were awarded imprisonment of two years in this case.
Three FCI officials, M S Tomar, P N Aggarwal and J R Monga, working as quality control assistant, had passed the substandard rice from millers and were held guilty in conniving with millers and were found dishonestly performing their duties by the court.
They were dismissed by the FCI after registration of FIR in the case.
The case against Bansal and others was lodged in 1998, when in a raid conducted by Punjab Food and Civil Supplies Department, the officials found substandard rice being supplied to FCI after milling by few millers of Bareta of Mansa district.
This rice was allotted to them through Punjab State warehousing Corporation (PSWC).
Bansal, the rice miller of Bareta in Mansa district, was Congress MLA from Bhudlada of Mansa district from 2007-12.
SAD candidate and now Punjab Irrigation Minister Janmeja Singh Sekhon defeated him from Maur assembly segment of Bathinda in 2012 polls.
After that Bansal joined SAD in September, 2012.
A petition was filed in Punjab and Haryana High Court by a farmer from Bareta, demanding a CBI enquiry into the embezzlement done by a section of Bareta millers, which the court had admitted and ordered CBI enquiry on September 23, 1999.
