Delhi airport shuts Navneet Kalra sent to 3 days police custody

New Delhi: A Delhi Court on Monday sent restaurateur Navneet Kalra to 3 days' police custody, a day after he was arrested by the Delhi Police from his brother-in-law's farmhouse in Gurugram.

The order in this respect was passed by Duty Metropolitan Magistrate Archana Beniwal after an application was moved by police seeking his 5-day police custody remand.

During the hearing, advocate Vineet Malhotra, on behalf of Kalra, submitted that his client has been arrested in a "mala fide manner" and was merely made a "poster boy" in the case.

"The arrest is mala fide. They know that my bail application is coming up for hearing tomorrow," advocate Malhotra argued.

Kalra's anticipatory bail is already pending before the Delhi High Court which in its last hearing declined to provide interim protection to him from arrest. During the hearing, Malhotra also claimed that oxygen concentrators were being sold at exorbitant prices online, for about Rs. 1 to 1.5 lakhs, and he was selling them much cheaper than that.

"I was providing concentrators at much cheaper prices than what is available on Amazon etc. They have just made me a poster boy," Malhotra told the court Further, while opposing the police remand, Malhotra argued, "For what purpose do they need custody? They have the money trail. They can get any information they want from me...request for police remand is absurd…"

"State should act like a prosecuting agency and not a persecuting agency. If this is the way investigation agencies are going to behave, nobody is safe," Malhotra further submitted.

Meanwhile, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastav, for the Delhi Police submitted that the allegations against Kalra were very serious and that a 5-day police custody was required to confront the accused following which police will come up with further course of action.

"Persons who were sold these concentrators were in such need. They (Kalra and other accused) are greedy persons who have made lots of money during this time...he had not surrendered. It was the police who arrested him. The whole society is looking at the investigating agency and the judiciary in the case," APP Shrivastav submitted.

During the hearing, Inspector Gurmeet Singh, on behalf of the IO in the case, told the court that police has details of 524 out of a total of 748 concentrators. "We have to recover laptops and other gadgets. There are more things including the procurement system than need to be unearthed," he told the court.