Delhi excise policy: Court sends businessman Amit Arora to 7-day ED custody

A Delhi court on Wednesday sent businessman Amit Arora the director of Gurugrambased Buddy Retail Pvt Limited to sevenday custodial interrogation in connection with a money laundering probe into alleged irregularities in the Delhi excise policy caseSpecial Judge N K Nagpal sent the accused to Enforcement Directorate ED custody on a plea moved by the agency which claimed that he needed to be quizzed to unearth the larger conspiracyArora was arrested by the ED on Tuesday night under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act PMLA He is the sixth person to be arrested by the agency in this caseThe accused was produced before the court and Special Public Prosecutor N K Matta appearing for the ED sought his custody for 14 days saying he was required to be confronted with other coaccused and with evidence collected during the investigationAlso read Redevelopment will kill Dharavis identity destroy its smallscale businessesThe ED told the court that on the basis of the investigation conducted so far Arora was involved in activity connected to the acquisition possession and use of the proceeds of crimeIt further claimed that the accused did not cooperate in the investigation and withheld information which was in his exclusive knowledge and extremely relevant to the probeThe agency added that huge digital and physical records have been seized during the search operations conducted till date which it needed to confront Arora withHe needs to be interrogated with respect to other associates and entities involved in the crime and regarding paying kickbacks to public servants the ED said in its application moved through advocate Mohd Faizan KhanSending the accused to sevenday custodial interrogation the court said There are specific allegations made against the accused that he had played a vital role in the above criminal conspiracy and also in commission of alleged offences in pursuance thereof by ensuring cartelization against the spirit of said policy and he had also been involved in payment of kickbacks to ensure the said objectiveThough admittedly the accused had earlier joined investigation of this case on more than 20 occasions as stated above the IO has stated that his statements US 50 of the PMLA have been recorded only on four occasions and much is still left to be disclosed by him and thus his custodial interrogation is felt necessary by this court for progress of investigation of the case it saidThe EDs money laundering case stems from a CBI FIRThe CBI in its first charge sheet filed in the case last week claimed that Arora along with coaccused Dinesh Arora and Arjun Pandey is a close associate of Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and the three were actively involved in managing and diverting the undue pecuniary advantage collected from liquor licensees for the accused public servantsThe ED also filed its first charge sheet prosecution complaint in the case last week naming arrested businessman Sameer Mahandru his company Indospirit and a few other entitiesThe CBI has also got Dinesh Arora to turn approver in the caseIt had alleged the Delhi government with its policy to grant licences to liquor traders favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it a charge strongly refuted by the ruling AAPIt was further alleged that irregularities were committed in modifications in excise policy extending undue favours to the licensee waiverreduction in licence fee and extension of L1 licence without approval etcIt was also alleged that illegal gains on count of these acts were diverted to concerned public servants by private parties by making false entries in their books of accounts a CBI spokesperson had saidBesides Sisodia who holds the excise portfolio in the Delhi government the CBI had named the then excise commissioner Arava Gopi Krishna the then deputy excise commissioner Anand Kumar Tiwari assistant excise commissioner Pankaj Bhatnagar nine businessmen and two companies as accused in its FIR filed on August 17In its FIR the agency has alleged that Sisodia and other accused public servants recommended and took decisions pertaining to the Delhi Excise Policy 202122 without the approval of the competent authority with an intention to extend undue favours to the licensees post tenderThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever