Police take Kalra to his office and restaurants to look for evidence

NEW DELHI: A team of the Delhi Police’s crime branch on Tuesday took businessman Navneet Kalra to his three restaurants — Khan Chacha, Town Hall and Nege & Ju — his opticals shop, Dayal Opticals, and an office in Okhla for “further recoveries” after previous seizures of oxygen concentrators and other medical equipment, investigators said.

Kalra was arrested on Sunday evening for allegedly hoarding oxygen concentrators and selling them at inflated prices.

A laptop and some “crucial documents” related to the sale and purchase of oxygen concentrators were recovered from Kalra’s Okhla office and other business establishments, an investigator said.

Kalra was arrested from a farmhouse owned by his in-laws in Gurugram. On Monday, the Saket district court sent him to three days’ custodial interrogation after the crime branch said his custody was required to unearth the whole nexus, the conspiracy behind the alleged black marketing of devices, and to track the money trail.

The police said he was on the run since the recovery of 524 oxygen concentrators from three of his restaurants, and from the office of Matrix Cellular between May 5 and May 7.

On Tuesday, Kalra was also interrogated to ascertain his role in the case, a police officer said.

The officer said that Kalra told the interrogators that he learnt of the raids on his restaurants from television news channels. Kalra told the police that since the channels identified him as the “mastermind” behind the hoarding racket, he left for the farmhouse in Gurugram with his family, fearing torture by the police, the officer sai.

The police have alleged that for each concentrator, Kalra and his partners made a profit of at least ₹55,000. The concentrators were bought for ₹14,000-15,000 each and sold at ₹70,000-75,000. The police said that since October

last year, Kalra and his associates bought nearly 7,500 concentrators and more than 2,000 concentrators were sold in Delhi.

Five people -- the manager of Nege & Ju restaurant, and the chief executive officer (CEO) and three senior officers of Matrix Cellular -- were arrested since the recovery of the concentrators. All five were later released on bail. While granting bail to the accused on May 13, the court said: “No prima facie case under Section 420 IPC is made out against the accused, at least from the contents of the FIR”, adding it was unable to understand the offence they had committed as the government did not regulate the prices of the devices.