Jagdish Bhola, convict in Rs 700 crore drug racket, walks out of prison after 12 years
BATHINDA: Twelve years after he was arrested in a multi-crore drug racket, Arjuna Award-winning wrestler and former Punjab Police DSP Jagdish Bhola finally walked out of jail on Sunday.
A bench of the Punjab and Haryana high court had granted him bail on May 21, with various conditions, including a bail bond of Rs 5 lakh and two sureties.
Bhola had won a silver medal in the Asian Wrestling Championship in 1991 and appeared in the Punjabi movie Rustam-e-Hind in 2008. A deputy superintendent of police (DSP), Bhola was dismissed from Punjab Police in 2012. He was arrested in Nov 2013 in connection with a Rs 700-crore drug racket.
Bhola was in jail for nearly 12 years. He has been convicted twice — in 2019 and 2024.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) named him an accused in the multi-crore synthetic narcotics racket after an investigation into money laundering was initiated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in 2013.
In Feb 2019, Bhola was convicted and sentenced to 24 years in jail by a special CBI court in Mohali in the Rs 700-crore drug racket busted Punjab Police in 2013.
Punjab Police had seized heroin, methamphetamine, pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, opium, intoxicating powder, and Rs 1.91 crore, besides some foreign currency and arms from him.
In the second conviction, Bhola was sentenced to 10 years in jail in a drug-linked money laundering case of Mohali in July 2024.
Earlier, the disgraced cop and wrestler was allowed to visit his native village, Raike Kalan in Bathinda district, for five hours to perform the last rites of his father, Balshinder Singh, on Jul 26, 2024. Before this, he had come out to perform the last rites of his mother for a brief period in Jun 2023.
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