Retired HSVP Officer Surrenders in SCO Plot Case

GURUGRAM: A 62-year-old retired Haryana civil services officer, who had been declared a proclaimed offender, surrendered before a city court on Friday in a vigilance case over the alleged illegal reallotment of two shop-cum-office plots of the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran in Sector 23, Anti-Corruption Bureau officials said on Saturday.

The accused, who retired from service in 2024, was taken on one-day remand for interrogation after surrender and was later sent to jail when produced before a court on Saturday, officials said. He was posted as Estate Officer-I of HSVP in Gurugram in 2018 when he allegedly permitted reallotment of the two SCO plots without approval from the chief administrator after their original allotments, made in 1997, had been annulled.

ACB officials said both plots were reallotted at the government rate applicable in 1997. Their combined value in 2018 was at least Rs 6 crore, resulting in an alleged loss to the exchequer. After the matter came to light, the reallotments were cancelled by the Haryana government and an inquiry was ordered. The officer was subsequently suspended.

Alleged reallotment, FIRs and remand

ACB registered two FIRs, on 28 November 2022 and 5 March 2023, against several suspects including the retired officer. Deputy Superintendent of Police Arjun Rathi of ACB Faridabad said the accused was declared a proclaimed offender by a city court in September last year in the first FIR. He was the only one pending to be arrested in both the cases. He allegedly received Rs 2 lakh to approve the reallotments. Six individuals including four government officials have already been arrested in both the cases, Rathi said, adding that he would also be arrested in the second case after a production warrant.

ACB officials said the Punjab and Haryana High Court had earlier granted the accused interim bail and later rejected it, according to the bureau's account of the bail history. The present custody follows his surrender as a proclaimed offender rather than a fresh open-court arrest on the street.

The allegations remain under trial and investigation. Nothing in the ACB briefing establishes guilt; it sets out the prosecution case on reallotment without competent approval, alleged undervaluation against 2018 rates, and an alleged illegal gratification of Rs 2 lakh.

For HSVP allottees watching Sector 23 commercial inventory, the case is a reminder that cancelled allotments cannot be quietly revived at old rates without the chief administrator's nod. For the bureau, Saturday's jail remand closes the long gap in which this accused remained the last proclaimed offender among those named in the two FIRs.