Five people including a convict in the infamous 2012 NRI kidnapping case, Pardeep Malik (42) were released from Model Jail, Burail, and their sentences remitted on the 74th Republic Day on Thursday. The other four convicts whose sentences were remitted as per the guidelines of the Government of India, are Neeraj, convicted in a 2018 case of attempt to murder, Sukhdev Singh, convicted in a 2011 case of theft, forgery, cheating, Rupinder Kaur, convicted in a 2015 case of stalking, molestation and criminal conspiracy and Reentu, a convict in a 2018 case of snatching. Malik, who was then 32, was arrested along with five others for kidnapping an NRI from Canada, Navneet Singh Chatha, from his house in Sector 18, Chandigarh, in April 2012. The six confined him in a farmhouse in Kurukshetra and forced Chatha to make a call to his brother in Canada demanding money. A team of crime branch rescued Chatha within 24 hours after a round of fire with the accused at the farmhouse in Kurukshetra. Chatha used to run a store in Brampton in Canada and had come to visit his family in Sector 18. The crime branch team had also recovered Rs 12.5 lakh, 300 Canadian dollars, a Honda Accord car from him, which was robbed from the victim. In September, 2016, District Courts, Sector 43, had convicted Malik and others with life imprisonment. In June 2020, the Punjab and Haryana High Court turned the life imprisonment to 10 years rigorous imprisonment. The sentences of Malik and Reentu were remitted of 60 days through the power invested to Inspector General of Prisons (IGP), Deepak Purohit. Three sentences of the others, Neeraj, Sukhdev Singh and Rupinder Kaur, were remitted according to the guidelines of Government of India. The five have completed at least 75 per cent period of their rigorous imprisonments.
