Raj Jit Singh Hundal Surrenders After a Supreme Court Order

Dismissed AIG Raj Jit Singh Hundal surrendered to Patiala police on September 24 and was formally arrested. Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav confirmed the arrest. Hundal had been a proclaimed offender since August 17, 2023, in a police-drug case that began with Inspector Inderjit Singh.

The walk-in followed a Supreme Court direction issued after Hundal’s own lawyer offered a surrender. The next date before that bench is October 1, when he may seek regular bail.

He Walked In After the Supreme Court Said So

On September 10, a bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Augustine George Masih heard Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 15843 of 2026. Senior advocate Amit Rawal, appearing for Hundal, told the court his client was willing to surrender. The bench adjourned the matter, directed him to surrender in the meantime, and listed it for October 1, with liberty to file an application after he complied.

The petition challenges a July 20 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Hundal has also asked that the case be moved off the Punjab Police, saying he would not get a fair probe from the same force that once employed him. That transfer fight is not new. He has tried more than once to pull the file toward another agency.

Patiala police took the legal step the court had opened. Yadav’s confirmation made the custody official. Early accounts of a six-year manhunt do not match the charge sheet dates. Hundal was named in the narcotics file in April 2023 and had been evading arrest since then, a span of more than three years.

He is due to be produced before a Mohali court on the day of the surrender. Remand hours and which unit holds him for questioning have not been set out in a police statement.

A July Order Put His Name on the Record

The surrender did not come from a quiet week in the cause list. In late July, a bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih was already dealing with Punjab drug matters when it put Hundal’s absence on paper. It impleaded Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, told the three chief secretaries to meet, and gave five days for affidavits on action taken.

The State of Punjab must also disclose in its affidavit the steps taken to search the corpus of Raj Jit Singh Hundal, who, following the registration of FIR No.1 of 2017 of STF, SAS Nagar police station, now stands dismissed from service; a look-out notice stands issued against him; his property stands attached; and he has been declared a proclaimed offender pursuant to an order dated August 17, 2023, passed by the JMIC, Mohali.

Supreme Court Bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih, July 2026

That paragraph is the state’s own checklist, read back to it from the bench. A lookout circular was out. Property had been attached. A magistrate in Mohali had already declared him a proclaimed offender. Still, the court had to ask what had been done to find him.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The custody: Hundal surrendered in Patiala on September 24 and DGP Gaurav Yadav confirmed a formal arrest.
• The court path: The Supreme Court directed the surrender on September 10 after his counsel offered it, and listed the case for October 1.
• The old tags: He was a proclaimed offender from August 17, 2023, with a lookout notice and attached property on the 2017 STF file.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The pickup: Which house in Patiala, and whether the Anti-Narcotics Task Force or a local station took first custody, has not been stated by police.
• The shelter: Who kept a proclaimed offender out of reach until a bench date forced a walk-in has not been named in any charge sheet made public.
• The remand: How long investigators will get him, and in which of the two live files first, is still before the Mohali court.

The louder question after the arrest photo is the same one the July bench put in writing. A lookout circular and a proclaimed-offender order are tools meant to shorten a hunt. They did not produce Hundal. A surrender offer in open court did.

What the 2018 SIT Put on Paper

Hundal rose through the Punjab Police Service to Assistant Inspector General, posted at Headquarters in the NRI wing when the axe fell. The file that ended that career is older than the Aam Aadmi Party government that signed the dismissal.

On December 15, 2017, the Punjab and Haryana High Court formed a three-member special investigation team to test allegations that then SSP Raj Jit Singh Hundal was tied to Inspector Inderjit Singh. The SIT was headed by Siddharth Chattopadhyaya, with Prabodh Kumar and Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh as members. Hundal had asked the court for a probe that kept then STF chief Harpreet Singh Sidhu off the team, saying Sidhu was biased against him.

Three reports went to the High Court between February and May 2018 and sat sealed for nearly five years. On March 28, 2023, the court opened three of the four sealed covers and left it to the state to act “in case they wish to do so.” Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s government acted on April 17.

THE FILE FROM SIT TO SURRENDER

The SIT did not write a simple clean chit or a simple indictment. Early readings of the sealed papers said they found no direct link to Inderjit and still asked for a further look at Hundal’s assets from 2013 onward. Once the covers were opened, the Home Department treated the same papers as enough to sack him.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Anurag Verma’s April 17 order said the three reports “leave no iota of doubt and prove the complicity of Raj Jit Singh with Inderjit Singh and their collusion with drug smugglers.” The order called the misconduct grave and “most egregious,” and dismissed him with immediate effect after clearance from the Punjab Public Service Commission.

Inderjit Singh and the Tarn Taran Years

The junior officer in that file is the reason Hundal’s name ever reached a High Court bench. Inderjit Singh, an ORP inspector who ran the CIA in Tarn Taran, was dismissed after the STF arrested him in January 2017. Police recovered 4 kg of heroin and an AK-47 from his house. He was accused of moving drugs from Pakistan, siphoning off seized narcotics for resale, and planting drugs on people to squeeze them for money.

Hundal was SSP Tarn Taran from April 14, 2013. In May 2013 he asked that Inderjit be posted with him, saying the inspector’s services were urgently required. The SIT recorded that Hundal recommended promotions and postings for Inderjit even with cases pending, including a double promotion pushed through days after show-cause notices. It also flagged a spike in assets held by Hundal and his family from 2013, and money described as gifts from relatives used to buy property.

In August 2023, a division bench of Justices G.S. Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan refused him pre-arrest bail. The bench said that instead of breaking the nexus, “he seems to have been indulging in the trade of narcotics,” and that his role “seriously needs to be investigated.” The same court had, years earlier, heard him argue that Sidhu would frame him. The SIT he won did not end the matter. It stored it.

Then DGP Gaurav Yadav, answering a Home query in April 2023 about other officers who had sought Inderjit’s posting, filed a nil report on that narrow point. His office did add that then DGP Sumedh Saini had used special powers to grant Inderjit a D-2 promotion to assistant sub-inspector on Hundal’s recommendation. The Home Department had already told the DGP it was “not possible for a low rank ORP Inspector to run such a huge network of extortion and drug trafficking alone,” and asked for files on seniors who approved Inderjit’s transfers, promotions, and local rank.

That wider list has not produced another public sacking at Hundal’s level. The man who signed the posting requests is the man now in Patiala custody.

Police Booked Him, Then Lost Him

Mann announced the sacking himself. Aam Aadmi Party Punjab said Raj Jit Singh PPS had been named in a drug trafficking case and immediately dismissed from his post, with the Vigilance Bureau told to look at money from the trade. The chief minister’s line was short: “Won’t spare those involved in drug trafficking.”

Two criminal cases followed. On April 19, 2023, the STF nominated him as a co-accused in the 2017 FIR, adding criminal conspiracy, fudged records, extortion, and NDPS counts. On May 16, 2023, a second FIR, No. 138 at STF Mohali, was registered under Sections 7 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 59 of the NDPS Act. He went underground after the dismissal. The STF issued a lookout circular. Raids did not produce him.

WHAT THE DISMISSAL ORDER ALLEGED

• The pairing: Hundal and Inderjit were “in cahoots,” and the Home order said the two had helped peddlers and smugglers.
• The samples: During Hundal’s tenure as Tarn Taran SSP and Inderjit’s time as CIA in-charge, more than 50 NDPS samples failed.
• The method: The order said Hundal shielded smugglers, implicated innocent people in false drug cases, and slowed the FIRs against Inderjit.
• The rank: He was described as the first SSP-rank Punjab Police officer sacked on drug charges.

Court papers show he did not stay entirely invisible. In October 2023 the Supreme Court, dealing with his challenge to the August High Court order, issued notice and granted ad interim protection in FIR No. 1: if arrested, he was to be released on a Rs 50,000 personal bond, with daily reporting as a bail condition to the investigating officer between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. On October 18, 2023, the High Court gave interim protection in the May 2023 corruption case file and told him to report from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. He did not remain in custody. On December 12, 2023, the High Court decided the anticipatory bail plea in that corruption FIR. By then the Mohali magistrate had already declared him a proclaimed offender.

He later went to the Supreme Court under Article 32 seeking a CBI probe and complaining that his wife, daughter, and son were being harassed. In July 2024 that bench was unconvinced he should have skipped the High Court. The transfer demand is the same argument now sitting inside the September 2026 special leave petition.

The Arrest Lands Ahead of the 2027 Polls

Punjab votes for a new Assembly in 2027. Mann’s government has made its anti-drug drive a central claim of the 2022 mandate, citing seizures, arrests, and the sacking of officers it says were in the trade. A former AIG in handcuffs is the kind of picture that campaign can use, especially after the Supreme Court had asked the state to account for the search.

Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal leaders have, for years, treated Hundal’s absence as proof that senior names in the drug file were not being pursued with the same energy as street peddlers. The case itself is older than AAP’s term. The SIT was formed in 2017. The reports were written in 2018. They were opened in 2023 only after this government told the High Court it was willing to see them. The delay charge will not vanish because the man walked in.

Custody also does not, by itself, prove the Home Department’s 2023 claim that a low-rank inspector could not have run the network alone. The order that sacked Hundal asked the DGP to look at every officer, “howsoever highly placed,” who had helped the trafficking. Publicly, the trail has stayed on one dismissed AIG and one dismissed inspector. Inderjit has been in jail. Hundal has not, until September 24, been in a position to answer a charge sheet in person.

October 1 Is Still on the Cause List

THE 2026 COURT DATES

1. July 20, 2026: Punjab and Haryana High Court passes the order Hundal now challenges in the Supreme Court.
2. Late July 2026: Justices Sanjay Karol and Augustine George Masih tell Punjab to spell out the hunt for Hundal and implead Haryana and Himachal Pradesh in a wider drugs matter.
3. September 10, 2026: Justices M.M. Sundresh and Augustine George Masih record his offer to surrender and direct him to do so before October 1.
4. September 24, 2026: He surrenders in Patiala, is arrested, and is due before a Mohali court.
5. October 1, 2026: The Supreme Court takes up the special leave petition, with liberty to him to apply for regular bail after the surrender.

The two trial files are still the June 2017 STF case in which he was named in April 2023, and the May 2023 corruption and NDPS case. Investigators can now seek custodial questioning they could not carry out while he was a proclaimed offender. His lawyers can now do what the September 10 order allowed: file for regular bail from inside the process, rather than from underground.

Hundal is listed to appear before the Supreme Court on October 1, when that bail request can be made on the strength of the surrender the bench required.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a criminal investigation and court proceedings, and it is for information only. It is not legal advice, a finding of guilt, or a view on bail, remand, or the merits of the pending FIRs. Readers who need advice on a criminal or service-law matter should consult a qualified criminal lawyer or the relevant court record. Charge details, custody status, and hearing dates reflect the public papers and official statements available on September 24, 2026, and may change at the next listing.