Ten to 12 women provided “entertainment” to the 16 high-profile New Year’s revellers, including industrialist Samir Thapar and a member of the Nanda family which owns the Escorts group, who were arrested in the forests of Lansdowne in Uttarakhand on the night of 31 December.
Samir Thapar is the vice-president and managing director of JCT Ltd. The Thapars were once owners of The Pioneer newspaper and ran Ballarpur Industries Ltd, among other business establishments.
Confirming the arrests, Uttarakhand Director General of Police M A Ganapathy told The Quint over the phone that “all the men have been booked under the Indian Forest Act, Excise Act and the Arms Act”. Besides the women, there were some children in the group too, Ganapathy said.
Also Read: Who is Samir Thapar, the Industrialist Held by Uttarakhand Cops?
‘High-Tech’ Tents in Lansdowne Forests
The women and at least 30-40 attendants taken along by the revellers from Delhi were let off by the Uttarakhand police, although the 13 slick SUVs were impounded. Among the 16 arrested were sons of other Delhi-based businessmen.
Speaking to The Quint, police sources said that before leaving Delhi for Kolhu Chaur, the party of revellers instructed one Mohinder Singh, a contact of Thapa’sr, to book three rooms at the forest department guest house nestled within the jungles. It is a birding area and located deep in the Lansdowne forests, adjacent to Jim Corbett National Park.
No sooner had the group of 70 people, including the women, settled down at the forest department guest house, the attendants were instructed to set up “high-tech” tents where all the “fun and frolic” was to happen. The tents were pitched over a wide expanse of the particular stretch of the forest.
After sundown, the attendants began cooking some meat, which, after the police cordoned off and raided Kolhu Chaur, was seized. Samples of the meat, the police sources said, have been sent to a forensics science laboratory to ascertain whether the flesh was of any endangered animal.
A .375 bore hunting rifle with telescopic sights was also seized along with 171 liquor bottles, besides music systems. The rifle has been seized and sent for tests to the forensics laboratory. Alcohol is not allowed in the core forest areas of Uttarakhand. The revellers, police sources said, were dressed in camouflage jackets.
Villagers Complained to the Police
As the evening wore on, the music became louder as the men and women turned raucous. This drew the attention of the “awestruck” villagers who were disturbed by the loud music and dancing. Finding the men in camouflage clothing, the alarmed villagers complained to the police. The SSP of Pauri Garhwal, Mukhtar Mohsin, swung into action, contacting superior officers, including Director General of Police Ganapati.
The sources said that taking a no-nonsense approach, Ganapati ordered the SSP to cordon off the area before taking any legal steps against the revellers. Once the revellers were rounded up, investigations indicated that some senior state forest department officials “may have been involved” in “extending help in the form of getting the rooms at the guest house booked and identifying the exact location for the tents to be pitched”, police sources said.
Had a Brush with Law Earlier
This is not the first time that Samir Thapar has had a brush with the law. In 2009, when he was younger still, Samir Thapar was picked up by the Delhi Police from an exclusive lounger bar, LAP, at Samrat Hotel which is adjacent to the Ashoka Hotel. The lounge bar was co-owned by film actor Arjun Rampal.
While media reports following Thapar’s 10-hour detention suggested that an over-zealous police had gone out of its way to take action because Jessica Lal murder accused Manu Sharma, on parole at the time, and one Sahil Dhingra had an altercation with the son of the then Delhi Police Commissioner YS Dadwal. Police, reports said, presumed that Thapar was accompanying Sharma and Dingra, although Thapar had denied this. The red Ferrari that Thapar owned at the time was impounded. But he was released after being interrogated at the Chankayapuri police station.
Thapar was in trouble way back in the late 1990s when he flew into Jim Corbett National Park in a helicopter which subsequently crashed in a stream. At the time, cases were lodged against him under the Wildlife Protection Act.
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