Uttarakhand had got requests to cancel Namdhari’s arms licence

Seeking former Uttarakhand Minorities Commission chairman Sukhdev Singh Namdhari's custody, the Delhi Police told court that 26 criminal cases had been lodged against him in the hill state between 1993 and 2009, eight of them being of murder, and that he had been accused of threatening people. They had received several requests to cancel his firearms licence, police said.

Opposing the five-day remand sought by the police, Namdhari's counsel R S Mallik pointed out that it was his client who had lodged an FIR in the case and had also rushed Ponty Chadha to hospital following the November 17 shootout.

"How can he be a conspirator considering that the other FIR lodged in the case, by Hardeep's driver Nand Lal, does not show his involvement?" Mallik said, adding that Namdhari's arrest itself was illegal. Ponty's younger brother, Hardeep had also been killed in the shootout.

According to the counsel, Namdhari was only accompanying Ponty to his farmhouse. It was Hardeep who opened fire, forcing his PSOs to fire at Hardeep in self-defence.

Nand Lal, in his FIR, had not mentioned anything about the shootout or about Namdhari's presence at the time of the alleged criminal trespassing, Mallik said. He had only identified three persons, who are already in police custody.

Earlier, the liquor baron's four guards — Bhupender, Rajpal, Uday and Anand — were remanded in police custody till November 25 for allegedly entering the disputed farmhouse in South Delhi and thrashing Hardeep's men.

Two others, Vijay Kumar and Madan Rana, working as caretakers at another farmhouse owned by the Chadhas, were arrested by the police on November 18 for allegedly restraining the farmhouse occupants and threatening them.

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