Chandigarh, July 2 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday dismissed a petition from former Punjab minister Sunder Sham Arora seeking a fresh probe into a 2022 corruption case against him. The Punjab Vigilance Bureau had arrested Arora from Zirakpur on October 15, 2022, and recovered Rs.50 lakh, allegedly to be handed over to Manmohan Kumar, then assistant inspector general (AIG), VB, Flying Squad, to help settle a graft case. On the AIG's complaint, Arora was booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Vigilance Bureau initiated investigation and submitted a challan in December 2022. In August 2023, a Mohali court dismissed Arora's plea seeking discharge. Arora approached the high court, highlighting the investigating officer (IO) in the case was a subordinate of the AIG and as such, the probe was bound to be one-sided and lacking in objectivity. Seeking that the case be handed over to an independent agency, he alleged that the investigation stood vitiated on the account of inherent bias of the IO in favour of the complainant, who held an overbearing influence and recorded his Annual Confidential Reports also. However, the high court bench of justice Tribhuvan Dahiya observed that it was too far-fetched to accept that a subordinate officer would always be biased in investigating a complaint filed by his superior, and would act in breach of his responsibility to be fair and impartial. "Such a view would be outlandish amounting to drawing a presumption against the professional ethics and duties every officer has to stand by," the court observed while dismissing Arora's plea. The court also noted that there was no allegation of personal bias or wrongdoing against the investigating officer. "In the absence of any allegation, much less any tangible material establishing bias, this court has no reason to believe that the officer would fail in performing his professional duties in accordance with law," it said, adding that it cannot be accepted that investigation was biased and vitiated merely because it had been conducted by an officer subordinate to the complainant. Unless miscarriage of justice had been established, "invalid investigation" was not a ground to order reinvestigation of the case after cognisance of the offence had been taken, the court said. "Considering the material collected during the investigation, which prima facie indicates the petitioner's presence at the chosen place (Zirakpur) to meet the complainant with currency notes - recovered and sealed in the presence of witnesses - it cannot be said the prosecution is without any probable cause, nor can it be termed an outcome of sheer malice," the court held, adding that it was for the trial court to ascertain whether ingredients of the alleged offence had been established against Arora beyond any reasonable doubt despite the lapses in investigation, if any....