Chandigarh, A court in Punjab’s Mohali has convicted an 80-year-old retired Indian Air Force official and his 77-year-old associate for money laundering in a 2008 case related to possession of cocaine, sentencing them to three years of rigorous imprisonment under the anti-money laundering law.
Special Judge Hardip Singh, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act , also imposed a fine of ₹ 5,000 each on the two while pronouncing the order on September 3. Dara Singh, who served in the IAF for 29 years and retired as a junior warrant officer , and his associate Gurdarshan Singh were booked by the SAS Nagar police in August 2008 for possessing 1.23 kg of cocaine worth ₹ 50 lakh at the time. The cheques had a combined value of ₹ 10 lakh. It added that, considering the convicts had been facing proceedings for the last 13 years while out on bail in the police case, the detention period already undergone would be set off against the substantive sentence of imprisonment. Court records accessed by PTI show that a trial court convicted the two in the police case in March 2015.
The police also seized two bank cheques that Dara Singh gave to Gurdarshan Singh “to purchase the said contraband”. During the hearing on the quantum of sentence, the two accused pleaded with the court to take a “lenient” view, considering they were the sole breadwinners for their families, suffered from various ailments, and maintained they were “innocent” because the police case was recorded “falsely” against them.
The court ruled that “these cheques being the outcome of the dealings between both the accused in that case are to be considered as proceeds of crime and the arguments of learned defence counsels are liable to be discarded.”
