ED custody till November 6 for ex-minister Anil Deshmukh

A holiday court in Mumbai on Tuesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody till November 6

A holiday court in Mumbai on Tuesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody till November 6. The Central agency arrested the 72-year-old Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader at around 1 am on Tuesday in connection with a money-laundering case registered against him in May 2021.

A holiday court in Mumbai on Tuesday remanded former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh to Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody till November 6 (ANI)

Shortly after conducting a medical examination at Sir JJ Hospital in south Mumbai, ED officials produced Deshmukh before a holiday court for remand. Additional solicitor general Anil Singh and Hiten Venegaonkar, who appeared for the agency, sought custody for 14 days.

They submitted that a comprehensive money trail needs to be established to bring the guilty to book, and, since Deshmukh has emerged as the main beneficiary, he is required to be interrogated in custody. In its application seeking Deshmukh’s remand, the agency said a foreign angle cannot be ruled out.

A money-laundering case against Deshmukh was registered on May 11 this year on the basis of the Central Bureau of Investigation’s First Information Report (FIR) of April 21. The CBI FIR was, in turn, based on allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.

In a letter written to Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 20, Singh had alleged that Deshmukh had directed certain Mumbai police officers to collect an amount of ₹100 crore every month from Mumbai’s bars and restaurants.

ED’s lawyers pointed out that the agency’s probe revealed that, on Deshmukh’s instructions, Sachin Vaze – an assistant police inspector in Mumbai – had called a meeting of bar owners, and that, between December 2020 and February 2021 collected ₹4.7 crore from the owners of so-called orchestra bars in Mumbai to avoid police interference. In his statement to ED, Vaze reportedly revealed that he handed over the “extorted money” in two instalments to Deshmukh’s aide Kundan Shinde.

Subsequently, they said, Deshmukh’s son Hrishikesh received an amount of ₹4.18 crore routed through Delhi-based shell entities as donations to a Deshmukh-led charitable trust, Shri Sai Shikshan Sanstha, Nagpur.

Deshmukh’s counsels, advocates Vikram Chaudhri and Aniket Nikam maintained that the NCP leader’s arrest was illegal. They pointed out that the original complainant Param Bir Singh himself had fled the country and is wanted in several extortion cases, and Sachin Vaze, on whose statement the agency was relying, is under arrest for equally serious offences. They added that Deshmukh was in no way related to the controversy and that the investigation itself was mala fide.

While ED’s counsels maintained that Vaze had, in his statements to the agency, referred to the former home minister as “Number 1”, Deshmukh’s counsel claimed that it was a reference to Param Bir Singh, indicating that Vaze was extorting money for Singh, and not for Deshmukh.

On June 26, ED had arrested Shinde and Deshmukh’s personal secretary Sanjeev Palande in the money laundering case, and on August 23, filed a charge sheet against them. Vaze is also an accused in the charge sheet.

“In July 2021, ED has provisionally attached Deshmukh’s properties worth ₹4.2 crore, which included the NCP leader’s residential apartment at Worli in south Mumbai, valued at ₹ 1.54 Crore, and 25 land parcels of book value ₹2.67 crore, at Dhutum village in Raigad district,” an ED officer said.

The properties were held in name Deshmukh’s wife Aarti and a company named Premier Port Links Pvt Ltd. ED officers said Deshmukh family had acquired 50% ownership in this company, including its assets i.e. land and shops valued at approximately ₹5.34 crore by paying just ₹17.95 lakh.