Officer on Special Duty Rajbir Singh Ghuman and five others fail to appear for questioning as state government challenges High Court order in Supreme Court.
An aide to Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has skipped questioning by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a high-profile corruption case, one day after the agency registered a case and conducted raids at multiple locations linked to the chief minister’s office.
Rajbir Singh Ghuman, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Mann, and five co-accused did not appear before CBI investigators in Chandigarh on Wednesday, October 7. People familiar with the matter said Ghuman had not been formally served the summons and preferred to await the outcome of a Supreme Court petition filed by the Punjab government challenging the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s order that directed the CBI probe.
The CBI registered a 251-page FIR on October 5 following the High Court’s directions. Ghuman has been named as the primary accused, along with alleged middleman Nitin Gohal, his brother Jitin Gohal (alias Raja), another OSD in the chief minister’s office Romi Raja Mahajan, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) youth wing leader Bir Devinder, and businessman RS Nagra. The agency is also investigating “unknown public servants and private persons.”
CBI Probes Alleged Cash-for-Transfers Network in Punjab:
According to the CBI, the case involves allegations of influencing and manipulating postings of IAS and IPS officers, departmental proceedings, policy formulation, administrative approvals, tender conditions, licensing matters, land-use conversion, property disputes, and revenue issues in exchange for pecuniary benefits. The agency said the FIR was registered after receiving a report from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which had earlier written multiple letters to the Punjab Director General of Police flagging an alleged “cash-for-transfer” network operating around the chief minister’s office.
On Tuesday, CBI teams conducted searches at eight locations across Chandigarh and Punjab. These included Ghuman’s official residence in Sector 2, Chandigarh-which was being used as a camp office-his ancestral home in Gharachon village in Sangrur district, and premises linked to the co-accused in Mohali, Gurdaspur, Ludhiana, Patiala and Jalandhar. Investigators seized laptops, mobile phones and documents.
The High Court had ordered the CBI investigation after criticising the Punjab Police for failing to act on the ED’s inputs. The ED’s concerns arose during a money-laundering probe into alleged irregularities involving a housing society and change-of-land-use permissions, where WhatsApp chats and other material reportedly pointed to influence-peddling linked to officials close to the chief minister’s office.
Mann Calls CBI Action Political Amid Punjab Probe:
Mann has strongly rejected the allegations, describing the CBI action as politically motivated. Speaking in Sangrur on Wednesday, he claimed the agency “returned empty-handed” after hours of searches and found nothing incriminating. “The CBI should disclose if anything was found,” he said, accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the centre of misusing central agencies ahead of Punjab’s assembly elections. “BJP has started preparations for the Punjab elections… ED and CBI will be misused to defame the Punjab government and me.”
The Punjab government has approached the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the High Court order. Opposition leaders, including Congress’s Partap Singh Bajwa, have urged Mann and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal to cooperate fully with the investigation rather than portray it as vendetta.
The case has intensified political tensions in Punjab, where the AAP government faces upcoming assembly elections. While Mann maintains his administration has nothing to hide and that the raids reflect integrity rather than wrongdoing, the CBI continues its investigation and is expected to pursue further questioning of the accused once legal challenges are resolved.