A special court in Madhya Pradesh's Tikamgarh on Thursday sent two former chief municipal officers of the Nagar Panchayat Jeron Khalsa in Niwari district and two others to 14-day judicial custody in an alleged scam worth over Rs 2.40 crore under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY).
The court hearing cases related to the Prevention of Corruption Act sent Nagar Panchayat Jeron Khalsa's former chief municipal officers Uma Shankar Mishra and Nawab Singh, sub engineers Sujan Gupta and Abhishek Singh Rajput to judicial custody, Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Jabalpur Superintendent of Police Devendra Singh Rajput said.
"These accused persons were arrested in Jabalpur on Thursday and were produced before the special court in Tikamgarh which sent them in judicial custody," he said. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan while campaigning for bypoll to Prithvipur assembly seat in Tikamgarh in September 2021 had said that he had received several complaints of allocation of funds of PMAY to ineligible persons for house construction.
Chouhan had instructed the officials to take action against those involved in the corruption. The state government instructed the EOW to probe the matter and a case was registered on January 10, 2022, he said.
The EOW had registered the case against 13 accused persons under sections 420, 120-B, 467, 468, 471 of IPC and 7(c) of Prevention of Corruption Act. The probe was handed over to the EOW's Jabalpur office, he said. Four persons are arrested while investigation is going on in connection with nine accused persons, he said. "During investigation several clues were gathered against the four accused persons that led to their arrest," Rajput said.
