KAPURTHALA: The Congress' Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira was on Thursday granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in connection with a 2015 NDPS Act case but arrested in a fresh one related to criminal intimidation.
The Punjab Police early on Thursday booked Khaira in a case of alleged threatening and criminal intimidation.
Khaira was arrested in September in connection with the 2015 case, triggering accusations of political vendetta against the state's ruling AAP from the Congress.
He had been seeking bail after his alleged role in a Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act case surfaced during investigations by a special investigation team. The drugs case was registered in March 2015 at Jalalabad in Fazilka.
Nine people, including Gurdev Singh -- allegedly a close aide of Khaira -- were booked in connection with the case and later convicted.
The police had seized two kilogrammes of heroin, 24 gold biscuits, a country-made pistol, a315-bore pistol and two Pakistani SIM cards from them. After being granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday, Khaira was arrested by Kapurthala Police in the fresh case.
Khaira was brought to Kapurthala from Nabha jail and produced before a local court, which sent him to a day's police custody.
The Kapurthala Police registered the case under sections 195A (threatening any person to give false evidence) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code against Khaira on the complaint of Ranjit Kaur. Kaur is the wife of Kashmir Singh, a key witness in the 2015 case.
In her complaint, Kaur alleged that two unidentified masked persons came to her home on a motorcycle on October 15 and threatened to kill her family if Singh did not withdraw his statement against Khaira.
On October 22, she received an anonymous call and was threatened that her family would be eliminated, she alleged.
In the 2015 case, Khaira -- summoned as an additional accused -- had last year claimed that he was summoned despite the Supreme Court staying the trial court proceedings against him in 2017.
He was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in 2021 on charges of money laundering linked to the 2015 case. He was granted bail in 2022.
Last February, the apex court quashed the summons against Khaira in the 2015 case.