Court turns down plea for police interrogation of 'Khan Chacha' owner for second time

A Delhi court on Saturday rejected a plea by Delhi police for further police remand of high profile 'Khan Chacha' restaurant owner Navneet Kalra in oxygen concentrator black marketing case.

Kalra, for his part, claimed he sold some of the equipment to police personnel and saved many lives with timely intervention. He choked after personally appearing through video conferencing before the court and claimed himself to be innocent.

Metropolitan Magistrate Vasundhara Azad declined a plea by the police to grant further custodial interrogation of the accused for confronting him with those customers who bought the machines of sub-standard quality and having not of worth to Covid-19 patients. The prosecutor wanted permission to further interrogate Kalra also in connection with his mobile phone and diary entries.

Also read: ED finds Kalra, aides dealt in 7,000 oxygen concentrators

The court put an application filed for bail by Kalra for consideration on Tuesday.

Kalra’s lawyer Vineet Malhotra claimed the oxygen concentrators sold by him were of the same quality which were bought Bollywood actor Salman Khan. "I have never made any representations about the concentrators being of German origin,” he said.

“In my considered opinion, police custody remand is not warranted. Application is dismissed," the judge said.

This is the second time the court junked an application for the police remand of the accused.

Earlier, a similar application was rejected by a different judge on May 20.

Kalra was sent to 14-day judicial custody. Earlier, the restaurateur was remanded to three days in police custody following his arrest Gurugram on May 16 night.

During a raid, 524 oxygen concentrators were recovered from three restaurants owned by Kalra -- Khan Chacha, Nega Ju and Town Hall.

After lodging of an FIR on May 5, co-accused Gaurav Suri, Satish Sethi, Hitesh Kumar and Vikrant were arrested in the case related to selling of poor quality China-made oxygen concentrators at exorbitant prices with fraudulent representation that those were of premium class, manufactured with German collaboration.