Former Glendale Heights village president accused of forgery, perjury
The former village president of Glendale Heights has been charged with committing forgery and perjury in connection with his failed reelection bid in the spring.
Chodri Khokhar was indicted by a DuPage County grand jury on Tuesday, according to court records. He is charged with six felony counts of forgery and one felony count of perjury.
Khokhar, who served one term as village president, ran for reelection but was removed from the April ballot by the village’s electoral board. The criminal charges are related to the nominating petitions he filed.
The forgery charges accuse Khokhar of submitting a petition, with the intent to defraud, that contained three signatures that were not genuine.
The perjury charge accuses Khokhar of “knowingly making a false statement, under oath or affirmation, which he did not believe to be true,” certifying that the signatures were done in his presence and were genuine.
Khokhar denied the allegations on Thursday, adding the charges are “100%” nonsense.
“These are a slap in the face of democracy,” he said. “These are a slap in the face of (all) the people who signed my petitions.”
Khokhar said he went house-to-house to find people to sign his petitions, and that everyone signed in front of him.
The village’s electoral board removed him from the ballot in December, after a contentious hearing on the validity of his petition. An objector questioned signatures on 12 of 24 pages of the petition. The electoral board concluded that the petition showed a pattern of fraud.
Khokhar has claimed that the three members of the electoral board were biased against him. The members of the panel were then-Village Clerk Marie Schmidt and then-trustees Chester Pojack and Mary Schroeder.
The DuPage County state’s attorney’s office investigated the case.
During a court appearance on Thursday, Khokhar was ordered to avoid contact with the three people whose signatures are in question. His next court date is Aug. 11.
Khokhar is still awaiting trial in another criminal case, where he is accused of felony disorderly conduct and misdemeanor battery.
The disorderly conduct charges state that Khokhar falsely reported to police that another village trustee, with whom he had disagreements, had threatened to bite him. The battery charge states that he pushed Glendale Heights Police Chief George Pappas in the chest.