The Punjab and Haryana high court on Wednesday directed a Panchkula special court to adjourn the hearing into an Enforcement Directorate (ED) case against the former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda beyond August 18.
The matter pertained to the ED probe of alleged money laundering in allotment of a plot to Associated Journal Limited (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper. “The trial court directed to adjourn the case beyond the date fixed in high court,” said Hooda’s counsel, Arshdeep Singh Cheema. A detailed order is awaited.
The plea was taken up by the bench of justices Ajay Tewari and Vikas Bahl of the ED case registered on July 15, 2016. It filed prosecution complaint before Panchkula trial court on August 26, 2019, and trial court took note of it on September 26, 2019 and summoned Hooda as accused. On Thursday, the trial court was to consider the issue of framing of charges against Hooda. The CBI court has framed charges against him in the case but trial stands stayed from the high court.
He has argued that there is neither any legal sanction nor any material warranting for his prosecution under the offence of money laundering. The complaint is liable to be dismissed as same is violative of constitutional protection granted under Article 20 (1) of the Constitution of India against the retrospective operation of penal provision. He has claimed that no prosecution can be lawfully launched on the basis of a complaint which, admittedly from respondent side, is subject matter of further investigation before the prosecuting agency. Hence, he has sought quashing of August 2019 complaint and September 2019 proceedings under which cognisance was taken by the trial court.
{{/usCountry}}He has argued that there is neither any legal sanction nor any material warranting for his prosecution under the offence of money laundering. The complaint is liable to be dismissed as same is violative of constitutional protection granted under Article 20 (1) of the Constitution of India against the retrospective operation of penal provision. He has claimed that no prosecution can be lawfully launched on the basis of a complaint which, admittedly from respondent side, is subject matter of further investigation before the prosecuting agency. Hence, he has sought quashing of August 2019 complaint and September 2019 proceedings under which cognisance was taken by the trial court.
{{/usCountry}}The money laundering probe was based on a CBI probe into the same controversy in which allegations are that the property allotted to AJL in the year 1982 was taken back in 1992 since AJL did not comply with the conditions of allotment. But when Hooda became the chief minister in 2005, he allowed the re-allotment of the plot to AJL at old rates.
At the time of the registration of the CBI FIR, late Moti Lal Vora was the chairman of AJL and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul were among the shareholders. The newspaper was launched in 1938 by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India.