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Money-laundering case: Drug racket kingpin Jagdish Bhola gets 10-year jail
17 people, including kingpin Jagdish Singh Bhola, were convicted in a drug-linked money-laundering case in Mohali, sentenced to up to 10 years in jail.
A special PMLA court in Mohali on Tuesday convicted and sentenced 17 people, including kingpin Jagdish Singh Bhola, a dismissed deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and former international wrestler, to up to 10 years of imprisonment in a drug-linked money-laundering case, popularly known as Bhola drug case.
The court also fined Bhola ₹50,000 which, if not paid, will invite one more year of imprisonment.
Bhola’s associates named in the money-laundering case, including his wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law, have been sentenced to jail for terms ranging from three to 10 years.
The Enforcement Directorate had named 68 people as accused in the multi-crore synthetic narcotics racket after an investigation into money laundering was initiated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in 2013 on the basis of eight FIRs registered at different police stations of Punjab during the SAD-BJP government’s tenure.
Bhola, an Arjuna awardee, was dismissed from Punjab Police in 2012. He was arrested by Punjab Police in November 2013 in connection with the ₹700-crore drug racket. The ED arrested him in 2014 and filed six chargesheets till 2017.
The PMLA court awarded the punishment to those chargesheeted in four of the six chargesheets. Out of the 23 accused in four chargesheets, four persons, including Bhola’s mother and father, died, while two others are proclaimed offenders. The court is yet to sentence the accused linked to the remaining chargesheets.
The court awarded 10-year jail to Jagdish Singh Bhola, Manpreet Singh, Sukhraj Singh, Maninder Singh, Sukhjit Singh Sukha and Avtar, alias Tari. Bhola’s wife Gurpreet Kaur, Avatar’s wife Sandeep Kaur, Jagminder Kaur, Gurmeet Kaur, Amarjit Kaur and Bhola’s father-in-law Dalip Singh Mann got three-year jail terms. Others, including Gurdeep Singh Manchanda, Subash Bajaj, Sunil Bajaj and Ankur Bajaj, got five-year jail terms.
Among them, Bhola appeared before the court through videoconferencing. Dalip Singh Mann was brought in the courtroom on a stretcher due to poor health. Bhola had purchased multiple properties in the names of his family members who were eventually nominated in the case. Property worth over ₹100 crore has been provisionally attached in the case.
Investigating officer and former ED deputy director Niranjan Singh said the sentences were handed out based on ED’s rigorous and courageous investigation after 10-year long fight against the drug lords and the nexus. “We confiscated several properties which were purchased using the drug money. Their market value can be around ₹400 crore but the book value is over ₹100 crore. Involvement of political leaders was there as even I was transferred during the investigation to Kolkata. Their names were also included in the remaining chargesheets against which the court is yet to pronounce a verdict. The Covid pandemic had halted the trial,” Niranjan Singh said after the verdict.
In February 2019, Bhola was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in jail by a special CBI court in Mohali in a ₹700 crore drug racket busted by Punjab Police in 2013. He was a key figure in the drug network, diverting chemicals meant for medicinal purposes to illegal factories in Himachal Pradesh’s Baddi that manufactured synthetic drugs and was supplying them to the international market.
After the racket was busted in 2013, the Punjab Police had seized heroin, methamphetamine, pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, opium, intoxicating powder, monoethylmine, phenoxylate, hydrochloride and ₹1.91 crore besides some foreign currency, arms and luxury cars from the accused.
