Former Gujarat home minister Vipul Chaudhary has been detained by the state Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) in a case of alleged irregularities of nearly Rs 500 crore at Dudhsagar Dairy, a senior official said on Thursday.
Chaudhary is a former chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) which owns the Amul brand, and has also headed Dudhsagar Dairy of Mehsana. The anti-graft agency also detained his chartered accountant Shailesh Parikh on Wednesday night from Mehsana, said Joint Director of ACB Makrand Chauhan.
Both will be formally arrested after their coronavirus tests, he added.
Mehsana ACB on Wednesday lodged a First Information Report against Chaudhary for alleged involvement in financial irregularities of nearly Rs 500 crore when he was chairman of Dudhsagar Dairy a few years ago. The FIR pressed charges of cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act against him, said Chauhan.
Chaudhary had been earlier arrested by the Gujarat Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in 2020 for alleged involvement in the siphoning off of Rs 14.8 crore from a fund meant for paying bonuses to Dudhsagar Dairy workers.
In 2014 he was sacked from both GCMMF and Dudhsagar Dairy over alleged corruption in cattle fodder procurement.
Chaudhary, a prominent face of Gujarat’s cooperative sector, was home minister in the Shankarsinh Vaghela government in 1996.
