ED gets 7-day custody of former J-K minister Lal Singh arrested in money laundering case

PTI

Jammu, November 8

A court here on Wednesday remanded former Jammu and Kashmir minister Lal Singh in seven-day custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a day after the agency arrested him in a money laundering case.

Singh, the chairman of the Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party (DSSP), was arrested from a house in Chawadi area of Sainik Colony here on Tuesday evening within hours after a special court dismissed his anticipatory bail application.

Singh was under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a case against an educational trust run by his wife and former legislator Kanta Andotra.

Special public prosecutor Ashwani Khajuria said the arrested accused was produced before the special court which granted the ED his seven-day remand instead of 14 days sought by the agency.

The special judge took note of the complaint of physical discomfort made by the accused and asked for his proper medical checkup, Khajuria told PTI, quoting the order.

Officials said Singh was shifted to the Government Medical College (GMC) Hospital in the early hours of the day after he complained of uneasiness.

He was discharged from the hospital around 3 pm and straightway taken to the court.

However, Singh alleged that though he was taken to the hospital but was not given proper medical aid.

“I was present in the emergency ward of the hospital but was denied proper medical treatment and even my admit file was not prepared and several tests not done. They have compelled the doctors to say that it is me who refused to take a CT scan,” he told reporters while being escorted to the court.

Scores of his supporters had assembled outside the hospital and chanted slogans against the BJP, claiming that their leader was being framed in a baseless case ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year.

Singh, a two-time MP and three-time MLA, switched from the Congress to the BJP in 2014 and was also a minister in the previous PDP-BJP government which collapsed in June 2018 after the national party pulled out of the alliance.

Several months before the fall of the government, Singh resigned from the BJP and floated the DSSP, following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of the accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018.

However, he defended his participation in the rally stating that he was there to “defuse the situation”.

Last month, the Enforcement Directorate had conducted searches in Jammu and its adjoining areas as part of the money laundering probe against the educational trust of Andotra and a former government official in connection with alleged irregularities in land purchase to set up the trust.

The federal agency had raided about eight premises in Jammu, Kathua and Punjab’s Pathankot on October 17 in the case against RB Educational Trust, its chairperson and Ravinder S, a former revenue official.

The money laundering case stems from an October 2021 charge sheet filed by the CBI in this case which alleged criminal connivance in the issuance of land between January 4 and January 7, 2011, without mentioning details in respect of violation of the ceiling limit of 100 standard kanals imposed under Section 14 of the Jammu and Kashmir Agrarian Reforms Act, 1976, thereby giving undue pecuniary advantage to trust.

Based on this, the trust acquired multiple pieces of land of about 329 kanals vide three gift deeds executed on January 5 and January 7, 2011, the CBI charge sheet claimed.

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