Leading bhangra-pop singer Daler Mehndi’s appeal against a two-year prison sentence in a case involving human trafficking that dates back 19 years was rejected by a court in Punjab’s Patiala on Thursday. He was then taken into custody and lodged in a neighborhood jail. In March 2018, he and his brother were found guilty and later released on bond. Daler Mehndi was arrested after the court of Additional Sessions Judge H S Grewal rejected his request for bail.
The musician, his brother Shamsher Singh, who passed away in October 2017, and two other people were charged by the police after it was claimed that the defendants stole Rs 1 crore from people under the pretence of sending them abroad.
Bakhshish Singh, the complainant, asserted that the contract never materialized and the defendant neglected to repay the money. The case was filed in Patiala in 2003. After being taken into custody, Daler Mehndi was later released on bond.
The police had previously filed two petitions with the court arguing that Daler Mehndi was not necessary in the case as he was unrelated to the immigration fraud known as “kabootarbaazi” (literally, “flying of pigeons”), which referred to numerous Punjabi youth attempting to immigrate abroad illegally.
The complaint claimed that the singer and his brother conned him out of a significant sum of money by promising to send him abroad as a member of their musical group and to leave him there to reside there. The two were allegedly caught by the police in October 2003.
After conducting investigations, police officers said that the singers and other performers had formed a well-organized scheme to forcibly transport young people from Punjab to western nations by enlisting them in musical ensembles. In each case, the youth faced fines of up to Rs 2 million.
