4 held for running fake pesticide racket in Punjab

The Vigilance Bureau has arrested four persons, including two agriculture officers, in Phillaur area here on charges of running a fake pesticide racket.
However, the Block Agriculture Officer of Phillaur Dr Ranjit Singh, the main accused in the racket, is still on the run, an official said today.
"Singh, in collusion with some shopkeepers, was allegedly selling fake pesticides to farmers for past several years," Satindra Singh, Senior Superintendent of the Bureau said.
While Surendra Pal Singh, Bhupindra Singh and agriculture officers Dilpreet Singh and Anwar Ali were arrested yesterday, Ranjit managed to escape, he said.
Ranjit was allegedly involved in producing fake pesticides and getting them labelled with original companies' logo on them. He then stocked these in Surendra Pal's godown, Satindra said.

He used to sell these spurious pesticides to the farmers claiming that the government was providing subsidy on these, he said.

On the complaint of a farmer to senior officers of agriculture department, an enquiry was conducted but it didn't yield any result following which the state government handed over the case to the vigilance bureau a week back.
It came to the fore that the said pesticide was not allowed in the region, and the said companies didn't produce those, the official said.
On learning about the departmental probe, Ranjit allegedly got the pesticides shifted to Bhupindra's bungalow from the godown. Later, when the bureau started investigation, the Block Agriculture Officer got the pesticides dumped into Satluj river from where the sleuths recovered its 125 packets, he said.

An FIR has been registered against the five accused under relevant sections of the IPC, the Essential Commodities Act (ECA) and the Prevention of Corruption Act, he said.
An investigation is underway in this connection, the Superintendent added.
The state government had ordered an inquiry into the alleged irregularities in purchase of pesticides for cotton growers. The inquiry reported "serious irregularities/violations" in purchase of pesticides by Agriculture Director Nirmal Singh Sandhu who was later arrested.
The farmers and the Opposition Congress are also demanding resignation of Agriculture Minister Tota Singh over the scam.