Chandigarh, February 3: Ravicharan Singh alias Ravi Deol, a gangster named in the Bhola drug case who surrendered before a local court on January 30, has blamed a Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and a government employee for pushing him into the field of crime and claimed that he was given Rs 12 lakh for not exposing their ‘misdeeds’.
“I am not a gangster and don’t describe me as gangster. You should use such words for those people who made me gangster,” Ravi Deol said while talking to mediapersons outside the court wherein he was produced after four-day police remand on Saturday.
“SAD leader Amanbir Singh Cherry and Major Kumar Mannu pushed me into the field of crime like other hundreds of youths. Once when I warned Cherry that I would expose his illegal deeds, he gave me Rs 12 lakh to keep my mouth shut,” said Deol, who was under police custody.
Cherry is a cousin of former finance minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa and under the previous SAD-BJP regime, he was known in the area as Dhindsa’s officer on special duty (OSD). Mannu is a laboratory attendant at Government Senior Secondary School, Badrukhan, in Sangrur district.
“I have told the police about the wrongdoings of these people and I am cooperating with the cops. Now I hope the police will take action against them,” he added.
However, Cherry denied the allegations levelled against him and said Deol is making such statements against them at the behest of some “political leaders”.
He added, “I have not met Deol for the past 15 years and never gave him Rs 12 lakh. He was produced in the court in an attempt to murder case, but he is giving political statements. It indicates that he is being guided by some political leaders. I demand the matter should be probed to find the people behind him.”
Mannu said, “When police allegedly recovered drugs from Deol’s residence in 2013, he sought help from him. I didn’t help him then. That’s why he is making false charges against me. Deol had uploaded a lot of stuff against me on Facebook in the past four years, but I have never communicated with him after 2013.”
When contacted, Sangrur senior superintendent of police (SSP) Mandeep Singh Sidhu said, “Ravi is on police remand. We cannot disclose what he has told the police. We will verify his statements and act accordingly.”
Meanwhile, the local court extended Deol’s police remand till February 11 as the police want to take him to Mumbai to recover a pistol. Deol spent 11 years of his underground life in Mumbai where he wrote songs and recorded them in his own voice.
Deol was declared a proclaimed offender (PO) in 2007 and named in the Bhola drug case in 2013.
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