Rahat Fateh Ali Khan revenue probe spills to 5 cities

Revenue authorities are slated to expand the probe into Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s singing contracts in five cities after the noted Pakistani singer was detained with huge amounts of foreign currency at the Delhi airport on Sunday, media reports say.

They will now investigate the shows he did in Rajkot, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Delhi.

The officials are also probing into a possible Hawala link, media reports stated.

Rahat along with two others — Maroof and Chitresh Shrivastava — are expected to appear before the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on Feb 17 again.

Rahat and his entire troupe of 16 members were detained at the IGI airport on Sunday after nearly USD 1.24 lakh was recovered by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) from the singer and two of his associates.

The Pak singer was released on Monday, 28 hours after being detained and questioned by revenue intelligence officials over recovery of unaccounted foreign currency from him at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here.

They were en route to Lahore via Dubai by an Emirate flight.

The recovered foreign currency included USD 10,000 and USD 8,600 in demand drafts.

He was released after the Pakistani government stepped in and asked that the singer be let out of the ?protective custody? immediately, media reports said.

The 37-year-old Rahat Fateh Ali Khan is primarily a singer of Qawwali, a devotional music of the Sufis, but he also sings ghazals and other light music. He is the nephew of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

He was awarded the Filmfare Award for Best Male Playback Singer this year for the ‘Dil To Bachcha Hai Ji’ number from ‘Ishqiya’.