NEW DELHI; Tejwant Singh, chairman of the scandal-ridden Skipper group of builders, has finally been found and arrested by the police. They found him in a private clinic in Kalindi Colony.

He has been remanded to judicial custody until August 19 and allowed to stay in the clinic (he says he’s having a he an problem) then. However, his lawyer says they have already applied for bail, it should be decided soon.

On July 27 non-bailable warrants had been obtained by the police for cases of misappropriation and fraud against him, Both related to Skipper Bhavan the structure built by the firm on 22 Barakhambha Road. The police say there’s a mass of evidence to confirm scores of instances where flats in the building have been each sold to more than one person, Since then, the police had not caught up with him.

The police say they learnt Tejwant Singh had gone to Saharanpur, UP, with the in-laws of his son Piabjot Singh. A police team was immediately dispatched there “to find Tejwant Singh had already left for Delhi.”

The police say he had gone to the civil hospital there with his heart complaint and had been referred to “higher institutions in Delhi.” The team came back and started combing private hospitals and clinics in south Delhi, They finally found him in Friends Medical Center, Kalindi Colony.

When this reporter visited the clinic, he found a lot of relatives and workers of Tejwant Singh there. The man himself was inside a locked door in the intensive care unit of the hospital, No one except known relatives and friends were being allowed to go in. The doctors were vague about the exact ailment Tejwant was suffering from. About this time, the metropolitan magistrate Ann Malhotra, visited the clinic. She was accompanied by a battery of lawyers. representing Tejwant Singh. Also. there was a public prosecutor and an assistant commissioner of police from the crime branch, She went into the ICU for about half an-hour and left after remanding him to judicial custody.

Recent arrest is only the latest of in number of trials the Skipper chief faces with the law in the coming days.

The high court has set up a two man committee of retired judges to try and straighten the Skipper Bhawan mess.

Article extracted from this publication >> Aug 21, 1992