Khan Market O2 Racket: Navneet Kalra arrested from relatives' farmhouse in Gurugram

Businessman Navneet Kalra who is one of the accused in the Khan Market racket has been arrested on Sunday from his relatives' farmhouse in Gurugram. He was arrested at 7 PM when a team of Delhi Police was sent to the farmhouse after receiving a tipoff. As Kalra has now been arrested, his anticipatory bail petition, which was to come up for hearing before the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, now stands infructuous. He has been taken for medical examination and will be produced before the Courts of Metropolitan Magistrates, Saket.

The Delhi High Court on Friday while holding a special hearing denied interim relief to Navneet Kalra, who has been the main accused in the hoarding and black marketing case of oxygen concentrators.

The Delhi Police had been on the lookout for Kalra who runs the two popular restaurants "Townhall Restaurant and Khan Chacha Restaurant" in Delhi. Apart from being a businessman, Kalra is known to be a socialist who has been seen flashing photos with popular celebrities and cricketers.

The Khan Market Oxygen racket

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic when the Disaster Management Act is in effect and medical resources are proving to be scare due to the alarming surge of patients affected due to COVID-19, a corruption racket was allegedly being run where oxygen concentrators were being sold three to four times more the cost to people in dire need of the essential medical machine which is used in the treatment of COVID-19 patients.

The Delhi Police had conducted raids at the two upscale restaurants and recovered 105 oxygen concentrators used in the treatment of COVID patients. According to the police, 96 oxygen concentrators were recovered from Khan Chacha Restaurant and nine were seized from Town Hall restaurant, both situated in the Khan Market area. The recovery of over 100 oxygen concentrators came after the arrest of four men from a restaurant-cum-bar in south Delhi's Lodhi Colony area on Wednesday who was allegedly involved in hoarding and black marketing oxygen concentrators, police said. After the arrest of the four men, the police had recovered 419 oxygen concentrators that were meant to be sold in the black market.

As per the invoices, each Oxygen concentrator that had been procured in bulk for not more than Rs 14,000 to Rs 16,000 from Hong Kong and China was being sold in India between Rs 50,000- Rs 70,000. Nearly 5,000 such Oxygen concentrators were sold in April 2021, and another 1,800 in May at the hiked prices.