Kingpin Bhola used drug money to buy assets in name of kin: PMLA Court

While sentencing drug racket kingpin Jagdish Singh Bhola to 10 years imprisonment in a money-laundering case, the special PMLA court observed that the dismissed deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and former international wrestler started with smuggling pseudoephedrine and there was no looking back for him.

The PMLA court had also convicted and awarded jail terms to the family members of the Bhola, including his wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law, who were sentenced to jail for terms ranging from three to 10 years. The court also declared that the properties of these accused seized by ED were purchased with drug money earned by Bhola.

The court observed that after Bhola’s drug business expanded with time and in the year 2012, the accused seemed to have been at the peak of his career.

“This fact stands confirmed and corroborated from the various entries in the statement of account pertaining to the bank accounts of accused Jagdish Singh Bhola and his various family members i.e. his wife Gurpreet Kaur, father Balshinder Singh, father-in-law Dalip Singh Mann, mother-in-law Amarjit Kaur and his deceased mother Baltej Kaur. It was during this period that the accused bought several immovable properties in his name and in the names of his family members and consideration amounts of which transactions were running into lakhs and crores”, the detailed court order reads.

The court further stated that when called upon to explain the source of the purchase of these properties, the accused could neither show the source nor give any satisfactory reply.

The counsel for Bhola had argued that his father Balshinder Singh owned around 16 acres of land and that he was earning handsomely from the said agricultural land and also from dairy farming.

Bhola added that being a renowned wrestler, he was given various awards as well as cash prizes from time to time. “It was from this income that the various properties were purchased by him,” Bhola told the court in an effort to explain the money source.

The court pointed out that the 16 acres of land have been shown to exist in the name of Balshinder Singh, son of Ranjit Singh and Tikka Singh, son of Jaswant Singh.

The accused stated that his father Balshinder Singh is also known by the name of Tikka Singh and thus is one person.

“Even if for the sake of arguments, it is assumed that Balshinder Singh and Tikka Singh are the two names of one person, how could Balshinder Singh have a father by the name of Ranjit Singh and Tikka Singh have a father by the name of Jaswant Singh. It is not humanly as well as biologically possible for a single male to have two different fathers, unless those fathers i.e. Ranjit Singh and Jaswant Singh also happened to be one person (one human being). In the said circumstances, it is very much clear that in order to show more agricultural land, the accused coined the story”, PMLA court observed.

The court also said that no clear evidence of the income derived by the accused and his family from agriculture and dairy farming.

Furthermore, the court stated that all the heavy transactions/transfers are shown to have taken place in the year 2012, the period when the accused was rolling in unaccounted wealth.

The court added that it came on record that Bhola indulged in the smuggling of drugs for a long time and it was in December 2005 that he was dismissed from the service by the Punjab police.

“In normal course, such people (falling in the category of accused Jagdish Singh) continue with their illegal activities, until, one fine day, they get nabbed by the police. By this time, by indulging in criminal activities relating to scheduled offence, they accumulate huge wealth and in order to give it the shape of untainted property, indulge in various activities/processes by converting the same and projecting it as untainted property”, the court of special judge Manjot Kaur observed.