Punjab and Haryana HC suspends two-year jail term of Daler Mehndi in human trafficking case

PTI

Chandigarh, September 15

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday suspended the jail term of Punjabi pop singer Daler Mehndi, who was convicted by a Patiala court in a 2003 human trafficking case.

The single bench of Justice G S Gill suspended the sentence of Mehndi who was sentenced to two years in jail in the case.

Mehndi’s counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema said the high court ordered the sentence be suspended in the matter.

Mehndi had moved the high court in July after the Patiala court upheld his two-year sentence, awarded in March 2018 by the trial court, 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 on July 14 had dismissed his appeal against the 2018 order of the trial court. He was then sent to the Patiala jail.

The Patiala police had booked Mehndi and his brother, Shamsher, who died in 2017, on a complaint filed by one Bakshish Singh. Around 35 more complaints levelling charges of fraud against the brothers also came up later.

The complainants had alleged that the brothers had taken ‘passage money’ from them to help them migrate to the United States illegally, but failed to do so. One of the complainants also alleged that the singer had taken money for taking him to Canada.

It was also alleged that the Mehndi brothers took two troupes in 1998 and 1999 during the course of which 10 persons were taken to the US as group members and “dropped off” illegally. Mehndi, on a trip to the US in the company of an actress, allegedly “dropped off” three girls in San Francisco.

The brothers had taken a troupe to the US in October, 1999, in the company of some other actors, during which three boys were “dropped off” in New Jersey, police said.

The Patiala police had raided the singer’s offices in Connaught Place in New Delhi and seized case files of those who had paid the Mehndi brothers passage money.

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