Daler pops up, makes a land deal on the run

‘‘Daler Mehndi appeared in person on November 17 and even got his computerised photograph clicked,’’ said tehsildar K.S Dhaka. ‘‘He had come to get the registry done for nine acres (of agricultural land) in Khaika which he sold to a party from Tighra village for Rs 30 lakhs,” Dhaka added.

He was at the tehsil office for more than an hour and completed all the formalities before leaving, sources said.

Mehndi’s lawyer Ravinder Kumar, when contacted, said that he was not aware of the deal. ‘‘Even if he has sold the property, he is well within his rights to do so,’’ he said.Daler makes a land deal

Officials at the tehsil office in Sohna said they had no intimation from the Punjab police. ‘‘Had we received information from them, we could have stopped him from selling the property and informed them,’’ said Dhaka. ‘‘Also, hundreds of people come everyday to get registries done, how do we know that somebody is running away from the law,’’ he added.

But isn’t Mehndi too popular a figure to remain unrecognised? ‘‘It is not necessary that everybody knows all prominent personalities,’’ Dhaka reasoned.

Gurgaon police officers expressed complete ignorance of the entire episode. While Senior Superintendent of Police Kuldeep Singh Siag was out of station, DSP (Headquarters) Balwan Singh said: ‘‘We had neither been alerted by the Punjab police nor had they requested for our help. In cases like these, an alert is generally sounded by the main investigating agency,’’ he said.

When contacted, Patiala Senior Superintendent of Police A.S Rai admitted that they were not in touch with the Haryana police. ‘‘We only started informing the police forces of other states from November 17, the day we initiated the process of declaring him a proclaimed offender,’’ Rai said. He said Mehndi will be declared a PO if he doesn’t surrender within the 30-day period which ends on December 19. ‘‘His properties can be attached and sold once he is declared a PO,’’ he added.

But what if he manages to sell off more properties before the December 19 deadline? ‘‘We have started making a list of properties so that we know what all does he own and will inform the other states to prevent him from making any further sales,’’ Rai said. Rai later informed that the police have approached the original complainant Bakshish Singh to file a petition to declare the transaction null and void. In Tighra, at the house of Ramsharan Gujar, whose three sons have bought the land from Mehndi, the women confirmed that they had bought land from Mehndi and insisted they had done ‘‘nothing wrong’’ and ‘‘paid a good price for the land.’’ Gujar’s sons, Balbir, Tekram and Ramrikh, were not available for comment.