In January this year, an NGO by the name of Roads Anti-Corruption Organisation (RACO) had filed a complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his brother-in-law Surender Kumar Bansal alleging irregularities in awarding of contracts for construction of roads and sewer lines.
The complaint had alleged that Kejriwal’s brother-in-law, who is now no more, ran dummy companies like Messrs Renu Construction in order to fraudulently obtain contracts via colluding with PWD officers. It was also alleged that Bansal failed to complete certain contracts but got the whole payment due to the pressure exerted by Kejriwal.
A few days after filing this complaint, the NGO claimed that it was getting threats and abusive calls from various anonymous numbers. A month after this episode, the case took a more serious turn when a journalist named Viplava Awasthi who worked for Samachar Plus alleged that he was assaulted and his car smashed by unknown assailants. Viplava had also reportedly filed a corruption case with regards to the irregularities in the PWD and alleged that the assailants threatened to kill him if he tried to further pursue the matter.
Sometime later, Kejriwal’s brother-in-law unfortunately died on May 7th reportedly of a brain stroke. This prompted the same journalist Viplava Awasthi to file an FIR demanding investigations into the death of Surender Kumar Bansal which he claimed was under “highly suspicious circumstances”.
Now as if all this wasn’t enough, the things have taken a really serious turn. It was reported that bullets were fired at the car of Rahul Sharma, the founder of RACO. It was reported that Sharma and his cousin were travelling towards Ghaziabad at 12 noon yesterday when two people on a bike wearing helmets overtook their car and fired at the front windshield before fleeing. Rahul and his cousin thankfully escaped unhurt. Rahul has claimed that the attack was due to the PWD scam case he was pursuing.
A CCTV camera has also captured the frightening incident:
#WATCH: Unidentified persons opened fire at car of Rahul Sharma, whistleblower of PWD scam involving Delhi CM’s relative(Greater Noida,31/5) pic.twitter.com/1PeoBHlyLv
— ANI (@ANI_news) June 1, 2017
Also as reported here, the assailants hadn’t fired in order to scare Rahul but they had every intention to hurt him, possibly murder him. Rahul has claimed that had he not ducked, the bullets would have definitely hit him. After the shots were fired, passersby and security guards from nearby building reached the spot and caused a commotion, prompting the assailants to flee.
Rahul again pointed out that he till date has filed about 200-250 RTIs with regards to the Delhi PWD’s work and has either received ambiguous or no replies in return. He has also claimed that there is evidence of discrepancies amounting to Rs 35-40 crores.
