Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh, his wife Pankaja and actor Amitabh Bachchan have been named in an FIR lodged at Babupurva police station in Kanpur on Thursday for alleged financial fraud amounting to about Rs 500 crore. The FIR has been lodged under various sections of the IPC, Prevention of Corruption Act and Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

While Amar Singh said the charges against him were mere “conjectures” which were not “tangible”, the Congress too backed the leader saying the case smacked of political vendetta. However, Shiv Kant Tripathi, on whose complaint the case was filed, said he just wanted to expose a major scam. “I do not have any personal rivalry with Singh or the others. I included Pankaja and Bachchan as they are stakeholders in certain firms with Amar Singh,” he said.

Tripathi, who owns Saryu Prasad Memorial Higher Secondary School in Shyam Nagar area of Kanpur, claimed he had evidence to show that though Singh has property and assets worth over Rs 500 crore, the total wealth declared by him in his Rajya Sabha nomination was just Rs 32 crore. “I have handed over the evidence of 1,000 pages to Babupurva police,” he added.

“It is surprising that Azimganj House, 1st Floor Camac Street, Kolkata, is also the office address of both M/s Pankaja Art & Credit Limited and M/s Sarvottam Caps Ltd. A close scrutiny of financial records reveal that M/s Sarvottam Caps is a shareholder in Ms Pankaja Art & Credit Ltd and vice-versa. The major shares of these two firms are held by Singh, his wife Pankaja and actor Amitabh Bachchan,” Tripathi said.

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