Chandigarh district court acquits gangster in 2018 criminal intimidation case

The district court acquitted gangster Sampat Nehra in a 2018 case of criminal intimidation and threatening a hotelier of giving false evidence against him in court.
Nehra, currently lodged in Bathinda jail, is a resident of Kalori village, Rajasthan. He was facing charges under section 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation), and 195-A (threatening any person to give false evidence) of the Indian Penal Code in the case registered on June 8, 2018, at the Sector 36 police station.
The complainant, Mohammad Kalam, a 51-year-old hotelier from Burail, had told police that he had filed an extortion case against an associate of Kali Rajput, a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi group.
Kalam said he had in December 2017 been abducted at gunpoint by four men after he was called to meet Kali. The accused asked him to pay ₹2 lakh, of which he paid ₹50,000. They, however, refused to return his car that they had taken with them, following which he filed the police complaint.
Police then arrested the four men who made the extortion call on behalf of Kali from Kajheri.
On May 29, 2018, Kalam said he received a WhatsApp call from someone who introduced himself as Sampat Nehra. “The caller told me that if I don’t give a statement in favour of Kali, he will kill me and my family,” he added.
Nehra’s counsel Raman Sihag argued that he was innocent and was falsely implicated in the case, adding, “The investigating officer did not verify the phone number from which the complainant received the threat call. Police did not make the complainant’s phone a case property, they did not even verify the phone number from CFSL. Lastly, the complainant has turned hostile.”
As the prosecution could not prove the case, the court acquitted Sampat Nehra.