Chandigarh: Congress legislator Sukhpal Khaira was granted bail in the criminal intimidation case by a district Kapurthala court on Monday.
The three-time MLA Khaira from Bholath, was arrested in the criminal intimidation case within hours after he was granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on January 4, last, in connection with a 2015 drugs case for which he was arrested on September 28, 2023.
He was arrested in a case registered in December last year by Kapurthala police on the complaint of one Ranjit Kaur, wife of Kashmir Singh, a key witness in the said drugs case. Kaur in her complaint alleged that two masked persons had come to her home on October 15 last year and threatened to eliminate her family if her husband did not withdraw his statement against Khaira.
The drug-bust case
For the record, the drugs case was registered in March, 2015, in Fazilka in which nine people including one Gurdev Singh, who was said to be a close aide of Khaira were also booked and later convicted. The police had recovered 2 kg heroin, 24 gold biscuits, a country-made pistol, a .315 bore pistol and two Pakistani SIM cards from them.
Khaira’s name had cropped up in the police probe though the apex court had stayed the trial court proceedings against Khaira in 2017 who was summoned as an additional accused in the matter.
Political vendetta against AAP?
These developments, however, triggered allegations of political vendetta against the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) from the Congress, the principal opposition party in Punjab. The state Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring and leader of opposition Partap Singh Bajwa had condemned the arrest accusing the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of indulging in political vendetta.
Earlier, Khaira was arrested by the enforcement directorate (ED) in 2021 on the charges of money laundering linked with the 2015 drug case while he was granted bail in 2022.
