Acclaimed cardiovascular surgeon and the founder of Medanta hospital, Naresh Trehan who was awarded Padma Bhushan in 2001, has been booked under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Prevention of Corruption Act after an FIR was lodged in Gurugram Sadar police station on Monday.
The FIR was lodged as per the directions of Addition sessions court which discovered irregularities with the 50-acre land allotment to Medicity project worth over 900 crores. Along with Trehan, 15 other private firms and unnamed government officers are booked under the same IPC sections of 120B (criminal conspiracy), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 463, 467, 468 and 471 ( related to forgery of documents, records). The complaint was initially filed by Gurugram-based RTI activist Raman Sharma who alleged that indigenous people were forced to abandon their ancestral land at the behest of the Medicity project in 2004 without having a say while the government of Haryana advertised for the project.
According to a report in The Hindu, the FIR accused that Dr. Trehan and his company Global Health Private (GHP) Limited who were the major contributor for the project didn’t have adequate finances and hence, resorted to illegally establishing a shell company for various financial maneuvers including issuing partly paid shares to GHP and attributing various grants to two other companies without any permission from the government or any health official onboard.
Dr. Trehan dismissed the allegations while a Medanta spokesperson said, “This complaint has been filed by a person who claims to be an RTI activist, however, it has been reported in the press that he has had an FIR for extortion registered against him. All the allegations in this complaint are completely false, baseless and motivated”
According to the Police Officials, the investigation will be carried out by senior officers and the team is “yet to be constituted”.
The parties in the FIR are SAS Infotech, GL Asia Mauritius, Dunearn Investments (Mauritius), Naresh Trehan and Associates Health Services, Global Infracon, Punj Lloyd, chief administrator of Haryana Urban Development Corporation (HUDA) in Gurgaon, administrator of HUDA in Gurgaon, Estate Officers-2 HUDA, and director of General Health Services, Haryana.
Image Source – Wikipedia
