How an AAP worker in ₹80-crore heroin case got bail: Majithia’s charge

Chandigarh. Punjab Police asked for more time to file a chargesheet against a heroin accused just three days before the legal deadline, and since those three days were holidays, he walked out of jail on default bail, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Bikram Singh Majithia alleged on Monday.

The accused, Lovepreet Singh, is an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) worker and an office-bearer in the state government’s Yudh Nashian Virudh campaign against drugs, Majithia said. He claimed the case was proof that the AAP government “is being bankrolled by drug money”.

Speaking to reporters in Chandigarh, the former minister said Lovepreet had close links with chief minister Bhagwant Mann and senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia, and was a familiar face on stage at the CM’s events.

According to Majithia, Lovepreet was arrested on March 18 with 8 kg of heroin, valued at ₹80 crore in the international market. He alleged that the police were then put under heavy pressure to show the seizure as only 4.5 kg, and that the effort to get him released began from there.

“First, the SHO who arrested Lovepreet was transferred. Then the SSP delayed filing the challan,” Majithia said.

In drug cases involving large quantities, the NDPS Act gives police 180 days to file a chargesheet. If they fail, the accused gets bail as a matter of right. Majithia said the police knowingly waited until the last moment to seek an extension.

“Those three days were holidays, so the extension could not be granted, and Lovepreet got default bail,” he said.

When the court asked why the prosecution had been so slow, it said the forensic science laboratory (FSL) report had not come in, Majithia added. “Incidentally, the FSL also comes under the home minister,” he said, pointing to Mann, who holds the home department.

Majithia claimed this was not a one-off. “Watertight cases like the one against Lovepreet are being diluted, and crores of rupees are being passed on to the AAP leadership for this,” he alleged, adding that this was why drug trafficking in Punjab was on the rise.

He also questioned the government’s use of bulldozers against drug peddlers’ homes under the campaign. Lovepreet’s properties, he said, had still not been seized because he was the chief minister’s “blue-eyed boy”.

“In direct contrast, the police plant drugs on their opponents and then arrest them, as happened in Khanna, which was also caught on camera,” Majithia said.