P C Upadhyay held
PrashantNews
Prakash Chand Upadhyay, former private secretary to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, was on Thursday arrested by the Uttarakhand police in a case of cheating, police said.
In a new case, Upadhyay along with Saurav vats allegedly fleeced Rs 51.74 lakh under the garb of providing tender to Ram Kewal of Haridwar-based JR Pharmaceuticals by showing their closeness with the Chief Minister. Vats has also been arrested from Rajasthan.
Interestingly, Upadhyay had worked as PS in the Chief Secretary office in the state secretariat for many years. He was very close to several former chief secretaries also.
In the month of August, a different case was registered against Upadhyay and six others on charges of cheating. In a complaint lodged in a Dehradun police station, Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Patiala in Punjab, had alleged that Upadhyay and his six accomplices duped him of around Rs three crore in the name of getting him government tenders in Uttarakhand. In the complaint, Sanjeev Kumar said that he and Upadhyay met in April last year and became friends. He alleged that Upadhyay promised to get him a government tender and for this, he took around Rs 3 crore from him and some of his associates.
It has been alleged in the complaint that when Upadhyay was asked to return the money after Kumar did not get the tenders, he gave a check of Rs 30 lakh which bounced.
Apart from Upadhyay, a case has been registered against Saurabh Sharma, Saurabh’s wife Nandini, Mahesh Maharia, Raunak Maharia, Shahrukh Khan and Amit Lamba in this case.
Upadhyay, who is now retired, was considered among the influential officers in the state. Prior to being appointed as private secretary to Dhami, he had also worked as private secretary to the chief secretaries of Uttarakhand.