Navneet Kalra, the high-profile restaurateur who is known for living a life of glitz and glamour and is linked with cricket stars and Bollywood celebrities and bookies may have run out of luck this time around after the Delhi Police recovered over 500 oxygen concentrators from his famous Khan Chacha restaurant, Town Hall restaurant and Khullar farms in Chhattarpur.
Kalra’s social media accounts are proof of his good connections with cricket stars, top bureaucrats, politicians, and Bollywood celebrities.
A Page 3 personality, Kalra has been in the news several times for wrong reasons, including his alleged links with cricket bookies.
Earlier, Javed and Saleem — sons of Khan Chacha’s former owner Haji Banda Hasan — had alleged that Kalra had forged documents and transferred the ownership of the restaurant in his name.
Khan Chacha, which has now become a chain, was first started by Haji Banda Hasan, popularly known as Khan Chacha in the bylanes of Khan Market in 1972. As Haji Banda Hasan’s sons Javed and Saleem expanded the business.
In 2010, the family joined hands with Navneet Kalra. However, in 2016 after running the restaurant successfully, the partnership split and the two sides fought a bitter court battle over Khan Chacha trademark. The brand name is currently being used by Kalra, while Haji Banda Hasan and sons have launched a new eatery chain.
Going through the social media profile of Kalra, one can see photos of him with politicians and celebrities including Sushmita Sen, Shahrukh Khan, John Ebrahim, Harbhajan Singh, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, and several others who had visited his restaurants Town Hall, Mr Choy, Ju, and the most famous Khan Chacha.
The 51-year-old legacy Dayal Opticals runs over 15 stores in Delhi-NCR with Kalra at the helm. And it’s not just Dayal Opticals, Kalra also owns many of the stores in Delhi’s posh Khan Market.
After the arrest of Gaurav, Satish Sethi, Vikrant and Hitesh, who is manager of one of the restaurant, from South Delhi’s Lodhi Colony area, the Delhi Police conducted raids and 96 oxygen concentrators were recovered from Khan Chacha Restaurant and nine were seized from Town Hall restaurant on Friday.
Around 387 more units of oxygen concentrators were recovered from Khullar Farm house in Chgattarpur which were being sold at exorbitant prices in black market. Matrix Cellular, owned by Gagan Duggal in partnership with Kalra, is one of the companies which was involved in importing the machines from China and the cost of these concentrators was between Rs 16,000 to Rs 22,000. Some of them were five liters and some were nine liters. The duo was driving up prices by black marketing these oxygen concentrators.
