E-Paper
Haryana: ED arrests judicial officer Sudhir Parmar’s nephew in money laundering case
Ajay Parmar, who along with his uncle and former ED/CBI judge Sudhir Parmar and M3M India director Roop Kumar Bansal is an accused in the April 17 FIR registered by the Haryana anti-corruption bureau at Panchkula, has been named in the June 13 enforcement case information report (ECIR) under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
A day after the promoter of the real estate development company, M3M, Basant Bansal, and his son, Pankaj Bansal, were held for money laundering linked to a graft case registered by the Haryana anti-corruption bureau (ACB) against suspended judicial officer Sudhir Parmar, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested his nephew, Ajay Parmar.
ED officials said that a search operation was conducted at the residence of Ajay Parmar, who is the deputy manager, legal, with M3M India, in Gurugram on Thursday evening.
Ajay, who along with his uncle and former ED/CBI judge Sudhir Parmar and M3M India director Roop Kumar Bansal is an accused in the April 17 first information report registered by the ACB at Panchkula, has been named in the June 13 enforcement case information report (ECIR) under Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Suspended judicial officer Sudhir Parmar and under arrest M3M director Roop Bansal have also been named in the ECIR.
‘Undue benefits for judicial officer through nephew’
According to the April 17 ACB FIR, ED officials said undue benefits were provided to Sudhir Parmar in his capacity as a sitting judge of the PMLA court in the IREO money siphoning case for not letting M3M Group, its promoters Roop and his brother Basant Bansal become accused in the case. “Undue benefit was passed to Sudhir Parmar through his nephew Ajay Parmar, who was given employment in M3M India Pvt Ltd by the M3M directors. Ajay’s salary was initially fixed at around ₹10 lakh per annum and after the prosecution complaint (a chargesheet) was filed and provisional attachment order was passed in the case, his salary was substantially hiked,” ED officials said.
ED officials said that Ajay Parmar’s bank statements corroborate the findings that M3M directors influenced former PMLA/CBI judge Sudhir Parmar by giving the appointment and salary hike to his nephew, Ajay Parmar.
“Ajay Parmar’s salary was almost doubled by M3M directors in August 2022 which showed that the increase had a direct correlation with the cases filed by the ED before Sudhir Parmar, who was holding trial of PMLA cases. A perusal of income tax returns filed by Ajay Parmar showed a significant jump of income from ₹2.64 lakh in the 2020-21 financial year to ₹9 lakh in 2021-22. The substantial increase in salary by M3M directors during the period when the ED was investigating the supplementary prosecution complaint can be directly linked to Sudhir Parmar, who was the jurisdictional judge in ED case,” the documents said.
The ED said that the bank transactions show that M3M directors indirectly bribed Sudhir Parmar, the then ED judge to take undue benefit in the case before his court. The facts reveal that Basant Bansal, Roop Bansal and Pankaj Bansal as promoter/directors of M3M group sought undue favours from Sudhir Parmar, the then ED judge, and granted him undue favours through illegal gratification, generating proceeds of the crime.
ED officials said that investigations have revealed that Ajay Parmar also received ₹40 lakh from an unknown entity between August 2022 and February 2023, the period when further investigations were being conducted by the agency to file a supplementary prosecution complaint.
FIR on basis of ‘reliable source info’, audio recordings, chats
The ACB FIR of April 17 was registered under Sections 7, 8, 11 and 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code against the judicial officer, Ajay Parmar and M3M director Roop Bansal for offences relating to public servant being bribed, a public servant taking undue advantage without consideration from person concerned in proceedings or business transacted by such public servant, criminal misconduct by a public servant and criminal conspiracy.
Sudhir Parmar, an additional sessions judge rank judicial officer was presiding over as the CBI and ED judge at Panchkula before he was suspended on April 27 by the Punjab and Haryana high court on being booked by the ACB on April 17. According to the FIR, Parmar was accused of alleged favouritism to real estate developer Roop Bansal and his brother Basant Bansal of M3M and Lalit Goyal of IREO Group.
The April 17 FIR by the ACB was registered on the basis of “reliable source information”, WhatsApp chats and audio recordings of the accused. According to the FIR, “reliable source(-based) information” disclosed instances of grave misconduct, abuse of official position and demand/acceptance of undue advantage/bribe from the accused in cases pending in Parmar’s court.
ED challenges grant of bail to Basant, Pankaj in Supreme Court
The central agency had on June 8 arrested M3M India director and Basant’s brother Roop Bansal in a separate PMLA case. The PMLA probe against Roop Bansal was initiated after multiple FIRs against the IREO group. The investigation done by the ED, however, revealed that hundreds of crores was siphoned off through M3M Group also, an ED statement said.
While the Delhi high court on June 9 granted interim relief (from arrest) to Basant Bansal and son Pankaj Bansal till July 5 in the IREO matter, the ED on June 15 challenged the high court decision to grant interim bail in the Supreme Court. A vacation bench of the apex court took up the matter and listed it for June 20.
