New Delhi: The Punjab and Haryana High Court this week refused to quash the arrest of Congress leader Dharam Singh Chhoker in a money laundering case. The ex-MLA had challenged his arrest on the grounds that Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers allegedly assaulted him and detained him without a warrant. A former MLA from Samalkha in Panipat, Chhoker had also argued that he did not need to be arrested in a case still under ED investigation.
However, a bench of Justice Tribhuvan Dahiya ruled that none of the three objections raised by the Congress leader were substantial and that there was no illegality in his arrest.
Dharam Chhoker was taken into custody from Delhi’s Shangri-La Hotel on 4 May. Dramatic footage of his alleged attempt to flee before being caught by ED officials went viral on social media.
This high court order marks another setback for Dharam Chhoker. In June, the same court had granted him interim bail, but soon after, the Supreme Court rejected another petition.
The HC had allowed bail to enable Dharam Chhoker to seek treatment for injuries he claimed were inflicted during his arrest. He then moved the Supreme Court, seeking an extension of the bail period and a modification of the HC’s observation that the interim relief was a “one-time measure”. The plea, however, was unsuccessful—a setback for Dharam Chhoker.
The money laundering probe against Dharam Chhoker stems from a Gurugram Police FIR accusing him and his sons of cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy via their family firm, Sai Aaina Farms Pvt Ltd (SAFL).
The company allegedly submitted fake bank guarantees to the town & country planning department to secure licences for constructing 1,500 affordable housing units. The ED has claimed that most of the Rs 363 crore collected from homebuyers was siphoned off into other family firms or used for personal expenses.
In his order, Justice Dahiya noted that Dharam Chhoker’s counsel had raised three main grounds against the ED’s arrest, “Firstly, that he was manhandled and assaulted at the time of arrest; secondly, the arrest was not in execution of the warrants issued by the Special Judge, since the petitioner was not shown a copy of the warrants; and thirdly, mandatory requirements under Section 19 of PMLA were not complied with, at the time of his arrest.”
However, Justice Dahiya said that the assault allegations—contested by the ED—could not be accepted at face value. According to the ED, when an officer introduced himself and attempted to show Chhoker the warrant on his phone, Chhoker tried to run away from the hotel bar, the judge added.
“It was with great difficulty that he could be apprehended at the hotel gate with the help of other officers and staff. It is also alleged that during this entire episode, the petitioner tried to resist the arrest and assaulted the officers,” his order noted.
Both Dharam Chhoker and the ED have filed FIRs against each other alleging assault, which, Justice Dahiya said, would now be decided at trial. The court said its role at this stage was only to assess whether the ED’s decision to arrest was “rational, fair and as per law.” It concluded that the materials on which the agency formed its “reasons to believe” were valid.
“Merely, because some of the reasons recorded are the same, as recorded for the co-accused, is no ground in itself to declare them inadmissible or invalid, especially when the petitioner and the co-accused, who are his sons, are accused of illegalities with respect to funds of a company—controlled by all of them,” the court held.
Dharam Chhoker’s counsel also argued that the ED did not need to take him into custody, especially since he had appeared before investigators and was not arrested in April 2024. The court rejected this claim too.
It noted that Dharam Chhoker remained non-cooperative throughout the probe. The Gurugram court issued six non-bailable warrants (NBWs) against him, all of which remained unexecuted until his arrest in May.
“Some of the NBWs were unsuccessfully challenged by him also, before this court. He remained non-cooperative throughout, and none of the six NBWs were executable,” said Justice Dahiya.
He added that the ED even alleged that Dharam Chhoker was hiding the proceeds of crime and using the money for family expenses after diverting it through loans or property purchases.
“To unearth this money trail, custodial interrogation was required, and this court has no reason to disbelieve the same at this stage,” Justice Dahiya added.
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Dharam Chhoker & sons’ long legal tussle with ED
Proceedings against Dharam Chhoker and his sons, Sikander Singh Chhoker and Vikas Chhoker, began in January 2021 when a businessman filed a complaint alleging forgery and fraud by Sikander in a project under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban).
Sikander allegedly submitted two fake bank guarantees of Rs 2.63 crore and Rs 1.24 crore to the town and country planning department. Over time, the ED added four more FIRs to the original Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) filed in 2021.
Dharam Chhoker and Sikander later approached the high court, seeking to quash the ECIR and subsequent proceedings, including NBWs and summons issued to them. The court dismissed their plea in February 2024. While their challenge to that HC order was pending in the Supreme Court, the ED secured another NBW against Dharam Chhoker and his sons.
Dharam Chhoker appeared before the ED on 12 April 2024 as directed by the SC, but he was not arrested.
ED later got fresh arrest warrants issued against Sikander and Vikas. Sikander was arrested on 30 April and sent to judicial custody. The HC granted him bail in January this year.
The special court again issued warrants for the arrest of Dharam Chhoker and Vikas. But it did not initiate proclamation proceedings against them, citing the ED’s lack of effort to execute the previous warrant against Vikas. Proclamation proceedings begin when an accused fails to appear before the court despite the issuance of arrest warrants.
The high court eventually directed the ED to arrest Dharam Chhoker while disposing of a petition filed by Bharat Singh Chhoker, another candidate from the Samalkha seat, who had sought his arrest.
Following this order, the ED secured an open-ended non-bailable warrant against Dharam Chhoker in January, which was finally executed when he was arrested from the Shangri-La hotel in May. The ED filed a prosecution complaint against him in June.
Meanwhile, a plea filed by Vikas to quash the proclamation proceedings against him was dismissed by the special court last month.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)