A UK-based drug lord, Ranjeet Singh, aka Raja Kandola (56), died under mysterious circumstances at a Mumbai hotel on Saturday evening. Kandola, who belonged to Haipowal village of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawanshahr), was found unconscious in his hotel room, his lawyer Mandeep Sachdeva said. “His family said he was rushed to a local hospital where doctors declared him dead. He is said to have died of cardiac arrest,” Sachdeva said. According to Sachdeva, he was recently released on bail following his conviction in an NDPS case in New Delhi. He was also convicted in connection with a PMLA case. The lawyer said that the conviction under the PMLA case has been challenged in the Punjab and Haryana high court.
He had been facing multiple FIRs in Punjab and New Delhi. According to police records, Kandola shifted to the UK in the late 1990s and became wealthy overnight after he fell into the drug trade there. In India, he was allegedly running a racket manufacturing ‘Ice’ (a party drug) from methamphetamine and ephedrine, and had been getting heroin supplied from Pakistan to further smuggle to Delhi and abroad.
The deceased was first arrested by Jalandhar rural police in June 1, 2012, in a case pertaining to recovery of ₹200-crore ICE (methamphetamine). Sections 22 and 29 of the NDPS Act and Section 25 of the Arms Act were slapped on him at the Kartarpur police station. He escaped from police custody in September that year but was re-arrested in New Delhi.
On the basis of the Punjab Police FIR, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out a detailed investigation and filed a chargesheet under the PMLA. In October 2012, the ED attached ₹20-crore worth properties belonging to Kandola, including palatial bungalows, a 9.5-acre farmhouse in Samrala of Ludhiana district, Hotel Roop Palace in Ropar and a bungalow at the DLF City Phase-I in Gurugram.
While the total registered value of the properties was about ₹5.6 crore, the market value of these assets was estimated to be over ₹20 crore. The ED claimed that the proceeds of the crime included drug supply in Punjab, Delhi and other big cities of the country. Kandola’s connections with residents in Canada, Australia and the United States were also investigated by Enforcement Directorate and anti-narcotic agencies.
On August 13, 2024, the Jalandhar district and sessions court sentenced Raja Kandola to nine years’ of imprisonment and his wife Rajwant Kaur to three years in jail in the PMLA case linked to the recovery of ₹200-crore drug.
Acquittal in two cases
In December 2023, a court acquitted Kandola and 13 others in the ₹200-crore ICE peddling case. Kandola was arrested by Inderjit Singh, the then in-charge of Jalandhar rural police’s crime investigation agency (CIA), who has been dismissed as an inspector over a smuggling case.
The court then observed that among the key facts on which the acquittal came was the honorary inspector tag of investigation officer Inderjit Singh (now dismissed) while he was actually a head constable. It was argued that a police official of the rank less than ASI could not investigate an NDPS case. It was also pointed that the main allegation was of synthesising ICE, whereas only the seizure of heroin was shown. In 2024, a court in Ludhiana acquitted him and his associate Gurnam Singh in connection with a 2017 heroin smuggling case. In both the cases, the respective courts snubbed the Punjab Police for the shoddy probes.
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