A rags-to-riches tale ends in tragedy for Uttar Pradesh’s liquor baron.

IT is one rags-to-riches story that is waiting to be made into a grand Bollywood film. The tale of a dirt-poor family in small-town India growing enormously wealthy within a few years is certain to mesmerise cinemagoers who crave for that kind of “success”.

Complete with crazy twists and turns, the story will highlight a venal political nexus and liberal use of money and muscle power to grow a small business into a multi-billion affair in record time.

There is crime and whodunit as well, and it ends when two brothers fight over property, leading to them fatally gunning down each other.

The story begins in Moradabad, a town in Uttar Pradesh (UP) some 160km from Delhi and best known for its brassware. Gurdeep Singh Chadha, 55, was a school dropout who helped his father hawk salty snacks in a cart outside a country liquor vend. Fortune smiled a few years later when his father managed a liquor vend of his own.

Liquor business being most lucrative due largely to unscrupulous practices such as adulteration, excise theft and overcharging, the Chadhas became ambitious and wanted to spread their wings outside the small town.

Their really big chance came in 2007 when the UP government of Chief Minister Mayawati allotted the entire wholesale liquor business as well as a third of the retail trade to the Chadhas.

With a population of over 150 million, UP was the biggest liquor market in the country. So controversial was the alleged Mayawati-Chadha connection that the Opposition Samajwadi Party committed itself during the campaign for the recent Assembly election to terminate the liquor licences of the Chadhas.

So when Akhilesh Yadav, son of the Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav, took over as Chief Minister of UP in March this year, most people expected the Chadhas to lose their monopoly over the liquor trade.

But the Chadhas soon began to do business with the new rulers of UP. Not for nothing was Gurdeep, the eldest of the three brothers, known for his penchant for winning powerful friends in politics, the police and the civil service.

Thanks to his winning ways, Gurdeep, also widely known by his nickname Ponty, had won a near-monopoly of wholesale liquor trade in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Since liquor trade generates a huge cash flow, Ponty diversified into other businesses. He invested big in real estate and reaped enormous profits. Shopping malls, multiplex cinema halls, film production and distribution, two Coca Cola bottling plants, sugar factories, paper mills, residential projects and commercial towers were some of the businesses the Chadhas ventured into in recent years.

Indeed, the Chadhas had most controversially cornered the over US$2bil (RM6bil) contract from the UP government to supply food to nearly three million schoolchildren and pregnant women.

Estimates of the family’s assets varied from US$2bil to US$6bil (RM18bil). Critics alleged the Chadhas’ was a case of crony capitalism which had given economic liberalisation a bad name.

Having made big money, the Chadhas lived in style in large farmhouses in South Delhi.

If only a few years ago nobody would give them the time of day, now senior politicians, bureaucrats and media celebrities were happy to socialise with them.

The dinner parties Ponty hosted at his sprawling farmhouse were the talk of the town.

The illiterate school dropout who had lost his forearm and three fingers of the other arm in a childhood accident now entertained like a king, with no expense spared.

On Diwali and new year, he gave expensive gifts to influential people.

Ponty, who wore designer Western labels and expensive watches, was keen to be accepted by the legitimate social set, and contributed liberally for the upkeep of religious places.

Little did he know that the end would come soon. After the death of their father last year, the three brothers began to squabble. Ponty reportedly was resentful of his younger brothers’ claim to an equal share when it was he who had single-handedly established the business.

On the fateful day in mid-November, he and youngest brother Hardeep first had an angry exchange of words over the ownership of a 4ha farmhouse. Within minutes, there was an exchange of fire after which both brothers died.

Ponty, it was reported, had a specially made pistol which allowed him to fire with his two fingers. Hardeep had two licensed firearms.

The brothers’ security guards and a politician friend of Ponty’s were present when the shooting took place.

The police have since arrested the politician and a number of security guards, though there is confusion over the actual incident leading to their death.

On the insistence of their mother, the funeral and other death rituals of her sons were performed jointly to counter the impression that the brothers had killed each other.

Control of the family empire passed to the lone surviving brother, Rajinder, and the eldest son of Ponty, Manpreet “Monty” Chadha, a school dropout like his father but well-versed in modern ways of living and etiquette.

The two are now at pains to reassure investors that Ponty’s death would not hamper their business. Without Ponty, ordinary people feared governmental clearances could become difficult.

Meanwhile, the police have hinted that there could be more than a mere fratricide behind the death of the Chadha brothers. Maybe someone with an eye on their huge business empire had hatched a conspiracy to have one brother eliminate the other so that he could grab their properties.

Investigations are still incomplete at the time of writing.

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