The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday suspended the jail term of Punjabi pop singer Daler Mehndi, who was in 2018 sentenced to two years in jail in a 2003 human trafficking case.
On July 20, he had approached the high court after the Patiala district court upheld the two-year jail term. “His sentence has been suspended, which means that he will be out on bail, pending proceedings before the high court,” his lawyer, Arshdeep Singh Cheema, said.
Mehndi was held guilty under Sections 420 (cheating) and 120-B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
The trial court had sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹2,000. After the additional district sessions judge dismissed Mehndi’s appeal on July 14, he was taken into custody and is lodged in Patiala jail. Earlier, he was convicted by a trial court in 2018.
The Patiala police had booked Daler and his brother Shamsher Mehndi, who died in 2017, and two others on a complaint filed by Bakshish Singh of Balbera village. Bakshish alleged that Mehndi took ₹12 lakh to send him to Canada. Thirty-five more complaints, levelling allegations of fraud against the brothers, came forward later. While Shamsher and Dhian Singh died during trial, Bulbul Mehta, an employee of Mehndi’s firm, was acquitted for lack of evidence.
The complainants had alleged that the Mehndi brothers had taken “passage money” from them to help them migrate to the US illegally, but failed to do so.
It was also alleged that the Mehndi brothers had taken two troupes in 1998 and 1999 during which 10 people were taken to the US as group members and were “dropped off” illegally.