Security personnel outside the farmhouse at Chhattarpur, New Delhi, on Saturday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Nov. 17: Controversial liquor baron Ponty Chadha and his estranged brother Hardeep were killed today when they and their guards traded gunfire after an argument during a meeting called to resolve their property dispute at a farmhouse in south Delhi.

The 55-year-old Ponty and his brother Hardeep, with whom he had a strained relationship, were shot in their chests during the meeting at the farmhouse in Chhattarpur — a 13-acre property to which both had staked claim — around 12.30pm. One of the guards also suffered injuries in the incident.

The three Chadha brothers — Ponty, Hardeep and Rajinder — were jointly managing the Rs 6,000-crore Wave Inc, formerly Chadha Group, which has diverse business interests in fields ranging from distilleries, multiplexes, sugar to paper mills, real estate, poultry and films.

Sources said Ponty and Hardeep were involved in an ugly dispute over the farmhouse, valued approximately at Rs 200 crore, and had planned to meet to discuss the issue today.

The sources said that Ponty, who, along with his two brothers, inherited properties worth Rs 8,000 crore from their father, Kulwant Singh Chadha, who passed away last year, decided to take matters into his own hands.

“There was a lot of ill-will between the two brothers. It is a shock for everybody, nobody expected it to escalate to this level,” said Hardeep’s lawyer, Gaurang Kanth.

“There were a lot of problems regarding the property settlement after the 2011 death of their father, who founded the Chadha Group business,” added Kanth.

Sources said that Ponty sent about 30 of his men to the farmhouse today to lay siege to the property that is surrounded on all sides by high walls. Soon after their arrival, the sources said, Ponty’s men got into a scuffle with Hardeep’s aides who had reached earlier. The brothers arrived within minutes of each other, each armed with three private security guards.

According to the police, the duo walked to the backyard together and within minutes Hardeep shot at Ponty, whose guards then fired back. Ponty suffered from disability in both arms as a result of a strong electric shock he suffered in a childhood accident.

Sources said that while Ponty was shot 12 times, almost all over his mid-region and torso, Hardeep had four injuries, mostly in the chest. While Hardeep died at the spot, Ponty was carried to the nearest hospital, Fortis, four kilometres away. Police officials say his men fired bullets in the air before carrying him to a waiting car and driving away. It was around this time that a call was made, at 12.28pm, to the police control room.

Forensic teams were seen gathering empty cartridges from the spot. Sources said that anywhere between 30 and 40 rounds were fired within half-an-hour on the premises, from where the police recovered two pistols. At least one guard is recuperating in the hospital, and the police are expecting him to relate the exact sequence of events.

This is the second incident of firing involving the liquor baron. On October 5, firing had taken place at his ancestral home in Moradabad. Ponty had then said his nephew Ranveer was testing his new rifle which accidentally went off.

Ponty’s business empire encompasses distilleries, multiplexes, sugar and paper mills, real estate, poultry and films. He was producer of the Sunny Deol starrer Jo Bole So Nihaal.

Ponty, considered close to Uttar Pradesh politicians, is one of the prominent names in liquor business in that state and was granted the sole distributorship for liquor.

Ponty was apparently close to the Samajwadi Party but switched loyalties to the BSP when Mayawati assumed power and became the sole distributor of liquor in Uttar Pradesh. But of late, he was said to have mended fences with the Samajwadis.

He had hit the headlines earlier this year when the Income Tax department conducted searches on his properties in February covering 13 locations in Delhi, including the upscale Sainik Farms, Lajpat Nagar, New Friends Colony, and at six locations in Noida, Moradabad and Lucknow.