Signboard beckoning property buyers triggered shoot-out at farmhouse

The gunfight between liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his brother Hardeep Singh Chadha was triggered by ‘For Sale’ board, put up by Hardeep Singh Chadha, outside the disputed farmhouse at Chhattarpur against the wishes of his brother Ponty Chadha.

Sources also said that a day prior to the day of murder — November 17 — Ponty and Hardeep’s men had clashed at the same spot around midnight when the former had intended to lock it down.

“However, peace prevailed when police intervened and both parties consented to sort the issue on their own,” said an officer.

There was a dispute over two farmhouses and Ponty, as suggested by his lawyers, insisted to maintain the status quo at the said properties but Hardeep defied his suggestion and put a ‘For Sale’ board outside both the farmhouses at Chhattarpur and Bijwasan.

Ponty even met the Delhi Police commissioner Neeraj Kumar three days prior to the shoot-out to seek guidance to solve the matter.

Though Delhi Police have already arrested eight people, including sacked Uttarakhand Minorities Commission chairman Sukhdev Singh Namdhari, in the cases of trespassing and kidnapping, registered three criminal cases, but the cops are yet to ascertain the exact sequence of the event.

They have visited more than six times to recreate the entire sequence of the gunfight with the help of ballistic and forensic teams but as of now, they have not reached to any conclusion.

On Thursday, Mathura Singh Mehra, Ponty Chadha’s servant, was arrested in a trespassing case.

Earlier, police arrested six people who assisted Ponty in trespassing, confining Hardeep’s employees and forcibly taking possession of both the farmhouses.

On November 20, police arrested four persons identified as Uday Raj Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Raj Pal and Anand Singh Bisht.

While Uday Raj Singh, 44, was Ponty’s personal security officer, 36-year-old Raj Pal was his daughter’s personal security officer.

Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Friends Colony, was a protocol manager at Ponty’s firm and Anand Singh Bisht, who hails from Almora in Uttrakhand, worked as Ponty’s driver.

Prior to these arrests, two employees of Ponty — Madan Rana and Vijay alias Malik — were arrested on November 19 for forcibly taking possession of Bijwasan’s farmhouse and hounding Hardeep’s men out of the premises.

Two set of groups, comprising 30 men in each, entered the farmhouses at Chhattarpur and Bijwasan on November 17 morning, beat up Hardeep's men and forcibly took possession of the farmhouses.

At Chhattarpur, these men fired several rounds of bullets in air to scare Hardeep’s staff.
After close to one hour, gunfight ensued between both the brothers in which they died.