Ex-minister Nawab Malik moves Bombay high court for bail

Justice Makarand Karnik posted Nawab Malik’s bail plea for a hearing on December 13. A Mumbai special court rejected Malik’s bail request on November 30

MUMBAI: Former Maharashtra minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Mohammad Nawab Malik on Monday moved the Bombay high court for bail in the money laundering case registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for allegedly usurping a prime plot of land worth ₹300 crore in Kurla in connivance with fugitive Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar’s deceased sister, Haseena Parkar.

NCP leader and former minister Nawab Malik being produced before a Mumbai court in March 2022. (HT File Photo/Bhushan Koyande)

A single judge bench of justice Makarand Karnik posted Malik’s bail plea for hearing on December 13.

The 63-year-old NCP leader moved the high court after a designated special court to hear Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases rejected his bail plea on November 30, holding that there was evidence to support the prosecution allegation of a conspiracy between Malik and Parkar in terms of statements given by Sardar Shahvali Khan – a convict in March 1993 senior bombings in Mumbai.

The special court also ruled that statements by Munira Plumber – the daughter of the land owner, though contradictory, cannot be brushed aside at this pre-trial stage. It also discarded Malik’s contention that penal provisions of PMLA were not applicable to his case, as all transactions entered into by him with respect to the plot took place much before PMLA came into force in 2005.

Malik was arrested by ED on February 23 in connection with the case registered on February 14 in which fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and some of his close aides are among the accused. ED’s money laundering case was based on an FIR registered by National Investigation Agency (NIA) on February 3, 2022.

ED accused Malik of “indirectly funding the D-gang activities by usurping a prime piece of land in Kurla with the help of Dawood’s deceased sister, Haseena Parkar, by using a fabricated power-of-attorney. In its charge sheet, the agency alleged that the former Maharashtra minister paid only ₹20 lakh to acquire the property - Goawala Compound in Kurla, in a September 2005 deal, and that he paid the amount to people other than Munira Plumber, the owner of the three-acre compound.

ED claimed that Malik and Parkar connived to usurp the land using a fabricated power of attorney after the death of owner Munira Plumber’s father - Fazalabbas Goawala, following which “nobody was looking after the said property.”

The ED charge sheet said that Malik, a local muscleman, first “illegally” occupied a store in the compound and got the tenancy registered in the name of his brother, Aslam Malik.

It was alleged that Parkar’s driver-cum-bodyguard Salim Patel met Plumber posing as a social worker and convinced her to execute a power of attorney in his favour so that he could help her clear the encroachments on the property as well as settle disputes with tenants.

According to ED, Patel, on Parkar’s instructions, prepared a supplementary power of attorney, which was used to transfer the property to Solidus Investments [owned by Malik’s family], whose tenancy rights he had also acquired. Solidus was a tenant at Goawala compound.