The star value of Punjab’s Patiala Jail has just increased. Former cricketer and Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu’s barrack houses popular singer Daler Mehndi, who has been jailed for two years in a 2003 human trafficking case.
Patiala Jail officials say that Mehndi has been kept in ward number 10, in which Sidhu also lives. The former Punjab Congress president is serving a one-year jail term in the 1988 road rage death case. Ironically, Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Majithia, against whom Sidhu had pressed for action, is lodged in the adjoining barracks after being booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.
Sidhu’s jail problem
On Saturday, Sidhu reportedly complained of severe knee pain and was referred to a jail doctor for his examination. Sources said that the doctor denied any major issue and reportedly said that Sidhu’s issues were related to weight. The Congress leader has already been provided diet food in jail as per the recommendation of doctors to reduce his weight.
A few days ago, some prisoners were shifted from Sidhu’s barracks after he complained that two of them had misused his cash cards to buy provisions from the jail canteen. He had alleged that the duo used his canteen card to buy things for themselves and within a week had exhausted the limit of Rs 15,000. He took up the matter with the jail administration.
New additions
Mehndi was taken into custody by the police on July 14 as a Patiala court also rejected his application for release on probation. The singer had filed an appeal against his conviction by the trial court in March 2018, which had sentenced Mehndi to two years in prison and also imposed a fine of Rs 1,000. Mehndi was then released on bail.
His appeal against the trial court’s order was dismissed by the court of Additional Sessions Judge HS Grewal last week. The singer’s lawyer LM Gulati has said that they will now move the High Court.
Patiala police had registered a case against Mehndi and his brother Shamsher Mehndi on the complaint of a person named Bakhshish Singh. More than 30 other complaints against the brothers alleging cheating also surfaced later. The complainants alleged that the brothers had taken “passage money” from them to help them immigrate to the United States illegally, but failed to do so.
The complainants had also alleged that the singer had taken money to bring them to Canada. It was also alleged that the Mehndi brothers took two circles 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 America in the company of an actress, allegedly “left” three girls in San Francisco. The brothers took a troupe in October 1999 in the company of a few other actors, during which three boys were “abandoned” in New Jersey.
The Patiala Police had raided the singer’s offices in New Delhi’s Connaught Place and seized case files of those who paid “passage money” to the Mehndi brothers.
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