Daler Mehndi appears before court

Manish Sirhindi

Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 26

Punjabi pop sensation Daler Mehndi, who had landed in trouble following allegations of running an illegal immigration scandal in 2003, today appeared before the court of Judicial Magistrate First class Sukhwinder Singh in connection with the decade-old ‘kabootarbazi’ case.

During the resumed hearing, defence counsel Brijinder Singh Sodhi started his cross-examination of prosecution witness former ASI Ajit Singh, who was part of the police investigation team that had probed the allegations against Daler Mehndi and his brother Shamsher Singh.

They had been accused of illegally sending people abroad disguised as members of his troupe by charging hefty “passage money.”

It had been alleged that Mehndi brother had taken two troupes in 1998 and 1999 during the course of which 10 persons were taken to the United States of America (USA) as group members and were “dropped off” illegally.

Daler, on a trip to the US in the company of Karisma Kapoor and the latter’s mother Babita, had allegedly “dropped off” three girls at San Francisco. The girls had been identified as Priya, Meenu Behn and Nimu, all from Gujarat. Both brothers took another troupe to the US in October 1999 in the company of Juhi Chawla, Raveena Tandon and Javed Jaffri during which three boys were “dropped off” at New Jersey.

Soon after the Patiala police registered a case against Daler and Shamsher, on a complaint filed by one Bakshish Singh, 35 more complaints came up levelling charges of fraud against the two brothers. The complainants had alleged that the two brothers had taken “passage money’ from them to help them migrate to the US ‘illegally’, but had failed to do so.

The Patiala police had even raided the offices of Daler Mehndi at Connaught Place in New Delhi and seized documents, including the case file of those who had paid the Mehndi brothers ‘passage money”.

In 2006, the Patiala police filed two discharge petitions articulating Daler Mehndi to be innocent, but the court had upheld that Daler Mehndi be prosecuted as there was `sufficient evidence against him on the judicial file and scope for further investigation.’ 

The defence would continue with the cross examination tomorrow.