Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti was on Friday summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to appear at its headquarters in New Delhi on March 15 in connection with a money laundering case, officials said.
A team of the federal agency reached Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief’s Fairview house with a summon, which wasn’t received by her family. “People had come with the summon but Mehbooba Mufti wasn't in the town so nobody received the summon,” her party’s spokesperson Suhail Bukhari said. Her family does not have any information regarding what the summon was about, he added.
In a tweet Mufti said, "GOIs tactics to intimidate & browbeat political opponents to make them toe their line has become tediously predictable. They don’t want us to raise questions about its punitive actions & policies. Such short sighted scheming wont work."
The case has been filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, news agency PTI reports citing officials.
{{/usCountry}}The case has been filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, news agency PTI reports citing officials.
{{/usCountry}}More details are awaited.
The development comes days after her party unanimously re-elected her as the president of JKPDP, which was formed by Mufti’s father and former J&K chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1999.
She has been travelling to different regions of the Union territory to address meetings and gather new faces for the PDP. Despite defections of leaders to join a new political front led by Altaf Bukhari after the scrapping of Article 370, her party continues to stand strong in south Kashmir, which was reflected in the PDP’s win on 27 DDC seats in the recently concluded elections.
Mufti was released last year after being detained from August 5, 2019, to October 13, 2020, following the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.