Namdhari, PSO sent to jail till Dec 13

A city court on Friday sent former Uttarakhand minorities panel chief Sukhdev Singh Namdhari and his personal security officer Sachin Tyagi to judicial custody until December 13 after the police said they were done with their custodial interrogation of the two men.

Namdhari is accused of killing liquor baron Ponty Chadha's brother Hardeep Singh during a bloody shootout at a disputed farmhouse in Chhattarpur on November 17.

Tyagi has been charged with criminal conspiracy.

Besides Namdhari and Tyagi, six associates of Ponty Chadha, who was also killed, have been arrested. All those who allegedly collaborated with Namdhari remain at large.

Metropolitan Magistrate Rajinder Singh directed that Tyagi be lodged in a separate cell for undertrial policemen after his lawyer expressed apprehension that he could face harassment from other inmates.

Crime Branch officials alleged Namdhari had destroyed evidence and helped a key associate flee Delhi in the days before his arrest in Bazpur, Uttarakhand, on November 23.

"We are yet to arrest Jagbir alias Raj Mistry who tampered with the numeric codes of the .30 bore pistol used by Namdhari and that of another pistol of the same make. Seizure of that weapon could have been crucial in the case but Namdhari covered his tracks," an officer said.

Investigators have carried out unsuccessful raids in Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh, Meerut and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and at several places in Uttarakhand.

Police said the Chadha family has asked for more time to give their statements.

Sources close to the investigation said Namdhari and Tyagi had confessed to having fired three shots each at Hardeep, who had tried to escape the bullets.

"Hardeep's body was found several feet away from the spot of the shootout," a source said.

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