The family's fortunes started looking up when his father Kulwant Singh Chadha managed to get the licence of the shop.

They now have a bungalow, which was among the premises raided, and a cinema hall in Moradabad in Feb 2012. Chadha took his first big leap first when former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav inaugurated his Wave mallcum- multiplex in Lucknow. His government allegedly gave several concessions to Chadha in the project.

But Chadha's empire saw a spectacular growth after Mayawati handed over licences of ‘ plum' regions in UP to him in 2009. “ The policy of awarding liquor licences was tailored for him,” an SP leader said.  

When delegates of the World Punjabi Organisation held their deliberations in Dubai in 2008 and were feted and hosted by Gurdeep Singh Chadha aka Ponty, at his palatial home—a party that was attended by everyone, who was anyone in the UAE—they couldn't have known their host might land into trouble with the Indian Income Tax department, four years later.

Wave Inc—as Chadha's family-owned company is now known—is under the lens of the Income Tax department and widespread searches of premises held by Wave Inc are going on. 

At the height of election fever in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, breathless anchors on television channels report that hundreds of crores of rupees have been found and even a 6X6X6 feet cement safe in the basement of one property that has so many neatly-bound bundles of currency notes that the services of several currency counting machines were required, although nothing conclusive regarding money siezed has been reported by the income tax authorities.

There is also the suggestion that Wave Inc, specifically Chadha himself, was so friendly with political dispensations in several states that leaders went out of their way to grant him favours by way of lucrative liquor and other licenses —something that was resented deeply by other competitors.