Wife: Raju a victim of business rivalry

CHANDIGARH: Dolly Sarabjit Singh, wife of Sarabjit Singh Raju, accused in cable sex scandal, said that her husband was innocent and was being made a target because of business rivalries. Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Dolly said that the business rivals of her husband were at the root of the allegations made against him. ''My husband has been the chairman of the Cable Operators' Association in Amritsar.The fight for the control of Siti Cable network in the city has led his rivals to indulge in mud-slinging against him.'' She said that the rival group had finally been handed over the control of Siti Cable network in Amritsar around three to four months back. ''But they could not sustain its operations and this resulted in major losses to the network. The network had in fact gone down to one fourth of the earlier income,'' she said. Against this background, she said that her husband had once again been asked to take over the Siti Cable operations in Amritsar. She said that of the 150 cable operators in Amritsar, around 130 were still siding with her husband. Whereas Raju's wife described him as the managing director of Siti Cable Amritsar, a press release issued by Siti Cable Network said that Raju was only an agent of the network and a separate legal entity in his own right. She said that a group of cable operators, some of whom were earlier working with Raju and one of his business partners, had conspired against him and had got the Punjab Human Rights Organisation (PHRO) lodge an FIR against him. ''It is all an outcome of the fight for the chair,'' she said. Among others, she accused Kulbir Singh Mattewal, J P S Jagga, Tittoo alias Lovely, Manohar Sharma, Arvind Kaushik, Sunil Bedi, Raman Kumar, Avtar Singh, Manohar Sharma, all cable operators and Binny Chatha, an erstwhile business partner Raju, of ''hatching a conspiracy against him, which resulted his arrest''. She said that the whole affair had been manipulated by vested interests who were ''hand-in-glove'' with the local police. She that the local police did not have any immediate cause or evidence against her husband for raiding his business premises and arresting him. She said that the working of the Punjab Human Rights Organisation too was above board and the non-government organisation had not bothered to get their side the story before filing the complaint. She said that the girls involved in the scandal had been made to play a role at behest of someone else. Breaking down at the press conference, she said that their family was one of the reputed families of Amritsar which had a good standing in the society for over the 50 years. Rajinder Singh Raju was arrested by Amritsar police on May 27 on complaint of the Punjab Human Rights Organisation.