punjabi singer Daler MehndiAn illegally constructed farmhouse located near Damdama Lake in Gurugram’s Sohna was sealed by the authorities on Tuesday. The authorities sealed three illegal farmhouses including the singer’s.
A senior official of the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) said, “These were unauthorized farmhouses in the reservoir area of the lake. All the three farmhouses have been sealed. They were developed in the Aravalli range without any permission.” District Town Planner (DTP) Amit Madholia said.
A demolition-cum-sealing operation was carried out with the help of the police force against three farmhouses in compliance with the orders of the NGT in the case Sonya Ghosh v. State of Haryana.
Under the leadership of DTP Madholia, a team comprising ATP Sumit Malik, Dinesh Singh, Rohan and Shubham carried out the sealing drive in the presence of Duty Magistrate Lachhiram, Naib Tehsildar, Sohna. A police team led by Sadar Sohna police station in-charge (SHO) was deployed there.
A senior official of the department confirmed on the condition of anonymity that one of the three farmhouses belongs to singer Daler Mehndi. He said that his farmhouse is built on about one and a half acres of land.
Human trafficking case against Mehndi in 2003
The Punjab and Haryana High Court on September 15, 2022 suspended the jail term of Mehndi, who was convicted by a Patiala court in a 2003 human trafficking case. A single bench of Justice GS Gill stayed the sentence of Mehndi, who is serving a two-year sentence in this case. Mehndi’s lawyer Arshdeep Singh Cheema said that the High Court had ordered suspension of sentence in this case. Mehndi had approached the high court in July after a trial court in March 2018 upheld the two-year sentence awarded to him in the human trafficking case.
The singer had filed a revision petition before the High Court against his conviction after the Court of Additional Sessions Judge in Patiala dismissed his appeal against the 2018 order of the trial court on July 14. After this he was sent to Patiala Jail.
The Patiala police had registered a case against Mehndi and his brother Shamsher on the complaint of Bakshish Singh, who died in 2017. About 35 more complaints alleging fraud against the brothers also surfaced later. The complainants had alleged that the brothers had taken ‘pass money’ from them to help them move illegally to the United States, but failed to do so. A complainant also alleged that the singer had taken money to fly her to Canada.
It was also alleged that the Mehndi brothers took over two congregations in 1998 and 1999, during which 10 people were taken to the US as members of the group and illegally “abandoned”. Mehndi, on a trip to the US with an actress, allegedly “abandoned” three girls in San Francisco. Police said the brothers had taken a troupe to the US in October 1999 in the company of some other actors, during which the three boys were “dropped off” in New Jersey. The Patiala police had raided the singer’s offices in New Delhi’s Connaught Place and seized case files of the Mehndi brothers’ financiers.
(with PTI inputs)
So read: Daler Mehndi gets relief in 2003 human trafficking case