ED raids Punjab’s Fastway Cable network owner Gurdeep Singh

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the properties of Gurdeep Singh, the owner of Fastway Cable Network and Jujhar Bus Service, in Ludhiana under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Thursday morning.

ED officials said that they were probing Gurdeep’s links with Surinder Pal Singh, a former chief engineer of Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA). Earlier this year, Surinder Pal Singh, alias Pehalwan, who is reportedly close to the Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, was booked by the ED in a money laundering case at its zonal office in Jalandhar on the basis of a Punjab Vigilance Bureau probe.

The VB arrested Pehalwan on June 9, 2017, after it found he allotted works of ₹1,200 crore at exorbitant rates. He was accused of parking his black money in accounts of bogus firms and family members.

Pehalwan joined the Punjab Mandi Board as a junior engineer in 1993. He became a superintending engineer in GMADA in 2014 and officiated as a chief engineer there from 2016. In September 2019, the VB attached 59 properties of the former GMADA chief engineer, amounting to ₹26 crore on the orders of a Mohali court. The Hindustan Times